PRIVATE BUSINESS

Standing Orders (Private Business)

Ordered,
	That the Amendments to Standing Orders set out in the Schedule be made:—
	SCHEDULE
	Standing Order 4a, line 4, after 'London' insert—
	'and, if it affects Wales, at an office in Cardiff'.
	Standing Order 4a, line 15, leave out 'or community' and insert—
	', or (in Wales) in the county or county borough in which the community,'.
	Standing Order 4a, line 37, after 'district' insert—
	', or (in Wales) in the county or county borough'.
	Standing Order 24, line 1, after 'notice' insert 'under the preceding orders'.
	Standing Order 26, line 4, at end insert—
	'(see also Standing Order 209 (Time for delivering notices, etc.))'.
	Standing Order 27, line 72, leave out 'Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions' and insert 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.'.
	Standing Order 27a, line 33, leave out 'Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions' and insert 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister'.
	Standing Order 29, line 8, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 34, line 11, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 37, line 11, leave out 'Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions' and insert 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister'.
	Standing Order 37, line 19, leave out 'Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions,' and insert 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.'.
	Standing Order 39, line 5, leave out ', the Home Office and the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions,' and insert 'and the Home Office'.
	Standing Order 39, line 7, after 'Industry' insert ', the Department for Transport and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister'.
	Standing Order 39, line 17, leave out 'General Register Office' and insert
	'Office for National Statistics'.
	Standing Order 45, line 21, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 47, line 10, leave out 'Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions' and insert 'Office of the Deputy Prime Minister'.
	Standing Order 80 is hereby repealed.
	Standing Order 81, line 1, leave out from 'Means' to the end and insert—
	'or the Counsel to the Speaker shall, on or before 8th January each year, hold a conference with the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords or with his Counsel for the purpose of determining in which House of Parliament the respective private bills should first be considered.'
	Standing Order 144, line 1, leave out from 'or' to the end and insert—
	'its objects, which are—
	(a) made by a minister of the Crown, and
	(b) presented to the House by being deposited in the Private Bill Office, shall stand referred to the committee on the bill.
	(2) Where a recommendation is made in any such report, the committee—
	(a) may, if it thinks fit, hear a person nominated by the minister in explanation of the recommendation, and
	(b) shall note the recommendation in its report and, if it does not agree to such recommendation shall state its reasons for dissenting.'.
	Standing Order 147, line 8, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 147, line 11, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 154, line 13, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.
	Standing Order 154, line 28, leave out ', Local Government and the Regions'.—[Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Oral Answers to Questions

EDUCATION AND SKILLS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Child Care

Linda Perham: What plans he has to increase pre-school and after-school child care provision.

Stephen Twigg: On 15 July, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced, as part of the spending review, plans to more than double child care spending and create 250,000 new child care places by 2006. In addition, we shall also be encouraging schools to provide and host a range of services, including child care, for the local community through our extended schools programme.

Linda Perham: I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he recognise the work of the Redbridge early-years and child care partnership on delivering excellent pre-school and after-school services with resources provided by the Government through sure start and other excellent initiatives? Will he also congratulate it on the recent award of a new opportunities fund boost of £200,000?

Stephen Twigg: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her comments and I am pleased to congratulate Redbridge on that. I know that she has a long-standing interest in providing the best possible early-years services in Redbridge. Indeed, she was a founding member of the Redbridge under-fives. The experience in her area demonstrates the importance of investment in such services.

David Cameron: I hope that the Minister has had time to read my Adjournment debate of last night on pre-schools. Sadly, no Education Minister was present to hear it. Will he take up my plea to cut the regulatory burden on pre-schools? They have Ofsted reports every year whereas primary schools have them only every five years. Their child profiles are 16 pages long and they have to have 24 policies, even though some of the pre-schools, like the wonderful Blackditch Bunnies in Stanton Harcourt which I visited recently, have fewer than 20 children.

Stephen Twigg: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for not having had the opportunity to read what I am sure was an excellent debate. It is this Government who have invested in early years, including pre-schools, via our funding of the nursery programme. I am happy to look at the detailed points raised by the hon. Gentleman, but I recall that before 1997 pre-schools were closing up and down the country. Thanks to our investment in early years, new pre-schools are opening up and down the country.

Judy Mallaber: Many of our children in Amber Valley benefit hugely from breakfast clubs and out-of-school provision. Will my hon. Friend ensure that funding for the current schemes continues when the new opportunities fund ends? Many clubs cannot be sustained by simply asking parents to pay, because they are in poorer areas.

Stephen Twigg: I know that those breakfast clubs and other out-of-school activities have made a real difference. We want to ensure that they are sustainable because the benefits that they bring are educational, social and economic. In my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Linda Perham), I said that our extended schools programme has great potential. I think new investment will be available not only for breakfast clubs, but for after-school facilities as well.

Andrew Turner: Is it not a frightful waste of money that pre-school settings and other educational establishments are employing people they cannot use because of delays in the Criminal Records Bureau system? Is the Minister aware of the length of those delays? What action is he taking with his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to put things right?

Stephen Twigg: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. The issue is serious and I agree with him. We are working with the Home Office and Ofsted to clear the backlog of delays. They are unacceptable and we want the problem resolved as quickly as possible.

Specialist Schools

Meg Munn: What plans he has to allow more schools to obtain specialist status.

Charles Clarke: I am pleased to announce today that the Government intend to remove the cap on national funding to support specialist schools. This means that every school in England which meets the required standard will from today be able to join the specialist schools programme.
	In addition, I can say that my Department is announcing a new partnership fund of £3 million in 2003–04 to be administered with the technology colleges trust in accordance with guidelines from my Department. This is designed specifically to help schools that have difficulty in meeting the current £50,000 sponsorship requirement.

Meg Munn: I thank my right hon. Friend for that welcome answer and his announcement. What support will be given to schools that apply for specialist status and do not meet the requirements, not because of financial reasons, but because their plan is deemed to be not good enough? It is demoralising for schools that are in difficult circumstances which want to take advantage of that opportunity to fall at the first hurdle.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is right. Support is offered through the technology colleges trust and local education authorities. I congratulate the director of education in my hon. Friend's city of Sheffield for the work that is being done to enable all the authority's schools that want to become specialist to achieve that by 2006, provided that they meet the quality standard. At the moment, 10 out of 27 schools in Sheffield are specialist, but I hope that my announcement today will help all schools to become specialist with support from the technology colleges trust and the local education authority.

Nick Gibb: Does the Secretary of State accept Ofsted's view that specialist schools should not be assessed as a homogenous group because specialist sports colleges, for example, have seen no real improvement in standards, whereas the best performing are those that specialise in languages; and that diversity does not, in itself, drive up standards? Have not we reached the point at which we must stop obsessing about structure and start looking at the philosophy behind the way in which teachers teach and the way in which they are trained?

Charles Clarke: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's fundamental point, in that it is right to look at particular schools in a particular way rather than to generalise across disciplines. His comments about Ofsted are not entirely accurate. Research by Ofsted confirmed that for the vast majority of schools already in the programme, specialist status has helped to sustain or accelerate the pace of school improvement. XSchool improvement" is the key phrase, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the purpose of the scheme is to develop school improvement programmes across the whole range.
	In evidence to the Select Committee yesterday, Ofsted's director of inspection said that it would be years before the picture became clear, and I accept that judgment. With a proper research programme, it will be some time before we see how things are going. However, I believe that our approach to school improvement, using specialist schools, is already delivering results and will continue to do so.

Barry Sheerman: Will my right hon. Friend look closely not only at Ofsted's evidence to our Committee yesterday but at the evidence from a range of academics who are concerned about the relationship between the investment in specialist schools, which is a great deal of taxpayers' money, and results? We know that good schools become specialist schools, but as yet specialist schools are not producing good schools. However, it would be churlish not to welcome the announcement that many more schools will be able to benefit from specialist status.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's welcome, and I shall look very closely at his Committee's conclusions. I have considered the evidence given to the Committee in hearings earlier this week, and a number of interesting points were made. However, anyone who doubts the contribution of the specialist programme to the process of driving up standards in schools, by providing focus and an opportunity to develop different aptitudes, is missing an important point. That is why I was so pleased to be able to announce today that the opportunity to take part in that dynamic and positive programme will be extended to all schools in the country.

Graham Brady: The Secretary of State clearly believes in specialist schools. He will be aware that in Northern Ireland, where schools are able to specialise by academic selection, GCSE results are 14 per cent. better than in England, A-level results are 13 per cent. better, and 20 per cent. fewer children leave school with no qualifications. What lessons does he draw from that for the specialist schools programme in England?

Charles Clarke: I do not draw the conclusion that the hon. Gentleman obviously does, which is that the 11-plus should be reintroduced throughout England. It would extraordinary if the Conservative party nailed its flag to 11-plus selection. The lesson that I learn is that the more focus schools have and the more their ethos encourages learning, the better they do. That is why I think that the specialist programme is positive and why I am so pleased to announce its extension today—it is the right way to go.

Classroom Assistants

Jim Cunningham: How many classroom assistants are employed in (a) the west midlands and (b) England.

David Miliband: The full-time equivalent number of support staff in maintained schools in the west midlands in January 2002 was 23,082. That includes more than 11,000 teaching assistants, more than 5,000 administrative staff, 1,775 technicians and nearly 5,000 other staff.

Jim Cunningham: What proposals does my hon. Friend have for career development for classroom assistants? Is he happy with their salary levels, which I believe are minimum wage?

David Miliband: My hon. Friend raises an important point. There are 80,000 more classroom assistants than there were five or six years ago. I had the pleasure of seeing, in Liverpool, a pioneering scheme to create a career path to allow teaching assistants to become classroom teachers. Classroom assistants' pay is a matter for local authorities and is determined locally. I know from my area that pay varies throughout the country, but I have not heard that assistants are on the minimum wage.

Geoffrey Robinson: Is my hon. Friend aware that the continued heavy investment in education which the Chancellor confirmed in his pre-Budget report yesterday is leading to good results in the numbers of classroom assistants and teachers? Is he aware that in my constituency, for example, Limbrick Wood primary school, which only three years ago was in special measures, has now made a remarkable turnaround and is achieving results above national average at key stage 2? Will he find an early opportunity to visit the school, where he will be most welcome, as in Coventry generally?

David Miliband: That is a very tempting offer. I was in Coventry two weeks ago, and am sorry to have missed that opportunity. I am happy to congratulate Limbrick Wood primary school on its outstanding achievement. My hon. Friend will know that in 1997, about 560 schools were in special measures, but that number has now about halved. I look forward to taking in Limbrick Wood primary school on a future visit to the region.

Gerry Steinberg: As an ex-head teacher, I greatly valued the classroom assistants who worked for me for a number of years. What does the Minister mean by high-level teaching assistants? If he means classroom assistants teaching formally, does he not agree that that destroys the ideal of a full graduate profession, for which we fought for many years when I was a very young man just starting teaching?

David Miliband: I am sure that the young man on the Back Benches agrees that high-level teaching assistants such as language specialists, laboratory technicians and music specialists who come into classes can make a genuine contribution to the learning of young people. It is important to point out that all classroom assistants work under the direction of qualified teachers. Teaching remains a graduate profession, but those graduates will be in charge of a wider range of support staff, from secretaries right up to high-level teaching assistants. That reinforces teacher professionalism, and is certainly not a threat to it.

Further and Higher Education

Paul Goggins: What steps he is taking to widen participation in further and higher education.

Margaret Hodge: Extending opportunity in both further and higher education is central to our aims. We announced the most ambitious programme ever for further education last week—a £1.2 billion expansion. Our excellence challenge programme for higher education is already encouraging wider participation and the strategy that we will publish in January will take that forward.

Paul Goggins: I thank my hon. Friend for her answer, but does she agree that a principal barrier to wider participation, particularly in further education, is the fact that far too many parents at home and people at work simply cannot read, write and add up adequately? What targets have the Government set to improve adult literacy and numeracy?

Margaret Hodge: I fully agree that it is an indictment of us all that 7 million adults do not have the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed to prosper in society and employment. We have set an ambitious target of 1.5 million achieving those basic skills by 2007, and I am proud that in the past 12 months, 250,000 have gained the required qualifications.

Mark Field: The Minister will recognise that, historically, further education has been a Cinderella subject, particularly in the present debate about higher education. In the City of Westminster in my constituency, we have a thriving further education college which I recently visited. One of the main problems there is funding for English as a supplementary language. Does the Minister have any thoughts about how we can ensure that from all the debate about funding further and higher education there emerges a ring-fenced fund to that end?

Margaret Hodge: We are extremely proud of the fact that we have been able to put a 19 per cent. real-terms increase into funding for further education colleges over the next three years. That will bring them back to the centre by providing them with the resources to deliver wider participation and higher standards. The issue of funding English as a foreign language is critical to building community cohesion among the many people who are joining us in this country. Our difficulty is finding enough teachers, but we are working on that.

Derek Foster: I wholly welcome my hon. Friend's statement about extra money going into further education. Does she agree that widening participation in further and higher education is crucial to areas like mine, which is in economic regeneration, particularly for people who have lost out at the age of 18 and discovered their motivation in their twenties and thirties? Will she therefore ensure that in their review of funding for higher education in particular, the Government will do nothing to damage widening participation?

Margaret Hodge: I share my right hon. Friend's passion for widening participation in both further and higher education. My constituency is not unlike his—participation in post-16 education, both further education and higher education, is far lower than I would like. I can give my right hon. Friend an assurance that ensuring that young people, whatever their background, have access to further and higher education is central to our work.

Tim Boswell: Given the continuing fiasco of the Department's handling of individual learning accounts, it is not surprising that the Chancellor of the Exchequer took it upon himself yesterday to announce yet another new target in that area, this time an increase to 90 per cent. post-16 participation in education and training. Given that it is almost as easy for any Minister to announce a new target as it is to miss an old one, will this particular Education and Skills Minister commit herself to resign if the new target is missed?

Margaret Hodge: I will resign as and when I think that I have acted inappropriately. Sadly for the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that that stage has yet been reached. The target announced by the Chancellor yesterday was a much better target because, for the first time, we have brought together into one target the vocational and the academic education of young people from the age of 16, to achieve a seamless progression. The purpose is to ensure that we deal with the very poor staying-on rates of young people at 16—one of the legacies that we inherited from the hon. Gentleman when he was a Minister with responsibility in that area, which is one of the areas that we intend to put right.

Fiona Mactaggart: Given that the new target focuses on young people in traditional academic disciplines as well as in modern apprenticeships and craft disciplines, how can we interest young people in the opportunities that exist in further education and training for craft skills and modern apprenticeships, which the economy needs and in which they need qualifications?

Margaret Hodge: I hope that a number of the initiatives we are taking will support that objective, which I share with my hon. Friend. The educational maintenance allowances that we piloted have shown an encouraging increase in the number of young people choosing to participate, in the pilot areas. The reforms that we shall bring forward in the 14-to-19 curriculum will introduce new pathways into vocational education alongside more general education, which again will encourage more young people into that. The taskforce that we established yesterday, which will be led by people in the field—those who require the apprenticeships—will bring more understanding of the problems, so that we can reach the objective that my hon. Friend and I share.

Secondary Schools

David Tredinnick: What the funding per head is in secondary schools in (a) Leicestershire and (b) England and Wales.

David Miliband: In 2002–03 Leicestershire's funding per pupil in secondary schools is £3,390. The average for schools in England is £3,850.

David Tredinnick: Is it not a fact that, like the Government's overdraft, which is getting worse, the amount of money available to children in Leicestershire under the current arrangements is getting worse? Whereas it used to be 10 per cent., current projections—I have checked the figures with the Library—make it look as though it will be 11 per cent. next year, which is the worst it has ever been in the county and certainly worse than it was under the Conservative Administration. Has not the time come to adopt option 5 in the proposals, which would stop the arrangement whereby additional educational needs are made the top priority, and would put more money and more emphasis on the basic allowance per pupil? That would be a much fairer system. What does the Minister propose to do about it?

David Miliband: I am sure the hon. Gentleman would want to congratulate the Government on increasing the standard spending assessment in Leicestershire by £18 million in the past year. I take seriously his concerns about the consultation that is currently under way and on which my right hon. Friend will make announcements in December. We take seriously all the representations that we have had from Leicestershire and elsewhere about the reforms to the system, and the hon. Gentleman will have to wait a little longer to find out our conclusions. However, I can tell him that the basic entitlement will remain the largest element of the school funding formula. That is an important part of any system.

Andy Reed: Along with all parents, I, as a governor of a Leicestershire school, welcome the increased expenditure that we have had since 1997, compared with the cuts in the preceding five years. Does my hon. Friend understand the frustration that parents will feel if the announcement that is made in the next couple of weeks does not substantially reduce the gap between the highest and the lowest funded education authorities in the country? Leicestershire is currently in the latter group. Even at this late stage, will my hon. Friend make a last-minute plea to ensure that the positive message that comes out is that we are addressing the enormous gap that exists, and that there is a bright future for Leicestershire schools, which will benefit from increased spending in the next few years?

David Miliband: I know that my hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for schools in his constituency. I assure him that a floor will be included in the new formula to ensure that there are no losers in the system, contrary to some of the disinformation that has been circulated. We are taking seriously the representations that have been made throughout the country and will make our proposals in due course.

Phil Willis: Will the Minister explain why, in determining the new formula for Leicestershire and other English and Welsh local education authorities, he has ignored the advice of the LEAs themselves, head teacher associations, governors and managers associations, Ofsted and the Audit Commission, in rejecting activity-led funding? After 18 months of deliberations by all those organisations, why has he simply said, XI'm not having any of it"? Will he explain that?

David Miliband: The hon. Gentleman is referring to the work of the education funding strategy group, which has made an invaluable contribution to the development of the proposals that have been made. His particular allegation relates to something called activity-led funding—the suggestion that we should make assumptions in Whitehall about how head teachers should deploy their resources in every school throughout the country. I do not think that that would be appropriate. What we are proposing is a simpler and fairer system that puts power in the hands of the head teachers. It will ensure that there is a clear basis on which every pupil is funded. At the moment, the system is based on historic funding levels and a 1991 census. That is no way to go forward, and he will see that our proposals live up to that aspiration.

Tony McWalter: Will my hon. Friend bear it in mind that blunt figures of the sort that he announced for Leicestershire understate the fact that delivery of the service is wildly more expensive in some areas than others? To give one example, an office in Hemel Hempstead costs three times as much as one in Glasgow. Will he therefore bear in mind the fact that figures on disposable income and the quality of service that can be delivered for the money are the most important ones on which he should be concentrating?

David Miliband: I am relieved to say that I am not responsible for the funding of education in Glasgow, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the new system will be based on three very clear principles: every pupil will have a basic entitlement; there will be a recognition of any additional educational needs for every pupil; and for different parts of the country, there will be a recognition of extra costs. That will be a simple system that everyone can understand and in which people can see how the money is being passed from us down to the schools.

Top-up Fees

Eric Illsley: If he will make a statement on his policy on top-up fees for universities.

John Grogan: If he will make a statement on the Government's policy on student top-up fees.

Tony Wright: If he will make a statement on the review of higher education funding.

Charles Clarke: We will publish in January a strategy document setting out our 10-year vision for the development and reform of higher education. After that, there will be further opportunity for interested parties to comment.

Eric Illsley: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his response. Given the funding crisis in the university sector, does he accept that top-up fees could have a perverse effect, as students might avoid the institutions that are charging higher fees? I understand that applications to Imperial college have fallen dramatically. Does he accept that in Scotland, which is a tuition-fee-free zone, applications to higher education have increased to a 50 per cent. target, whereas in this country, our applications have stayed at the 1998 level? Will he look to a graduate or alumnus tax and to collective provision for the crisis in our education sector?

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for that question and I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a funding gap for higher education that is serious and that we must address. We must sort out the question of what the precise funding is, and it is important that individuals who pass through higher education make a contribution. The various arguments about a graduate tax, top-up fees, or whatever are very important. I share his concern that any system that we introduce should not have any intended or unintended consequences in terms of reducing access, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) mentioned in his earlier question.
	Those are precisely the issues that we are considering in detail. We are having a substantial discussion about such questions, which is a good thing. We also need to discuss the nature of the university system and how it should evolve as a whole between its research, teaching and economic regeneration functions. I hope that we will have those discussions.

John Grogan: When my right hon. Friend signs his name to the White Paper in January, will he make a tough political choice and reject the unelected siren voices of those who advocate student top-up fees, such as that chap Andrew Adonis, and instead bring new year joy and jubilation to the majority of Labour Members, the Secretary of State for International Development, probably most of the Cabinet and, most important, millions of youngsters and parents in hard-working families throughout the country with just enough hard-earned income to ensure that they have no chance of top-up fee abatement?

Charles Clarke: The hon. Member is a good friend, and I appreciate the way in which he put his question. If the matter were as easy as he suggested, we would already be in the position that he suggests. I like to call Mr. Adonis XMr. Xoffice" after Professor Ted Wragg's article, which said that I had to choose between the advice of XMr. Tony's Office", whoever he may be, and me. Mr. Adonis is slightly misrepresented in my hon. Friend's question.
	Neither my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister nor his staff are wedded to top-up fees. They want to solve the problem that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) identified—of raising money so that world-class, excellent universities such as York obtain the resources that they need. They have considered the various options and reached views on the potential merits of top-up fees, the graduate tax and so on. We are examining that now. The suggestion that a group of people is madly focused on top-up fees against all reason is false. We are assessing the options in the hope that we can present the country and the House with decent proposals in January.

Tony Wright: Is not the fundamental fact that our university system is in crisis? Student numbers have doubled in a generation, while the unit of resource has halved. Many universities are bankrupt, staff salaries are stagnant and some of our most distinguished researchers are leaving the country. If we say what we oppose in funding, we must also say what we support. Do we not need a wider review of the university system that goes beyond the narrow parameters that the Government have announced?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend overstates the case a little, although I acknowledge that the 36 per cent. reduction in funding per full-time equivalent student from 1989 to 1997 has intensified all the pressures that he describes. As he implies, it means that we must confront the choices.
	For 35 years, there has been a sense of drift in the definition of a university. We need to identify much more clearly the great research universities, the outstanding teaching universities, and those that make a dynamic, dramatic contribution to their regional and local economies. The funding system flows from the conclusions. The Department's website therefore includes a series of issue papers that cover a range of subjects, not simply student finance. I accept the thrust of my hon. Friend's comments, that one cannot resolve the finance issues without views on tackling the other relationships. I am determined to do that.

Andrew MacKay: Is not the genuine problem the fact that we have become hooked on increasing student numbers in higher education? That has led to awful funding effects. Would not it be better to fund properly students who will benefit from higher education? We would not then have to consider top-ups.

Charles Clarke: I know that some hon. Gentlemen, especially on the Conservative Benches, subscribe to the Xmore is worse" school of thought on higher education. I do not. Our economy will succeed or fail in the next 20 or 30 years, depending on the productivity, effectiveness and education of our people in a competitive world economy. We were right to set our manifesto target of 50 per cent. of the population obtaining higher education qualifications.
	I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there has not been enough serious thinking for a long time about the nature of the higher education qualifications. For example, I believe that higher education in further education colleges and two-year foundation degrees make a major contribution. We need to consider a method of getting the academic and vocational streams to work far better. That matches the announcement that my hon. Friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Higher Education made earlier, following the Chancellor's announcement yesterday. However, it is wrong to say that we should simply abandon an ambition for a large proportion of our population to get higher education.

David Burnside: The Secretary of State will realise the importance in university funding of the allocation of funding for research, both for educational purposes and for the relationship with industry and inward investment. Does he share my alarm at the expenditure per head across the four parts of the United Kingdom? In Northern Ireland it is only £15 a head; in England, it is £19; in Wales, £22; and in Scotland, £35. What will the right hon. Gentleman do to increase the research expenditure in universities in Northern Ireland and England?

Charles Clarke: I have not studied the particular national comparisons that the hon. Gentleman has just given me, but I will certainly do so. I agree with him that research is an absolutely vital dynamic aspect of the regeneration of economies in all parts of the United Kingdom. Universities need to be better—there are issues about the governance of universities in this regard—at going out and identifying the kind of research that will enable them to succeed, and at making things happen in a much better way. We already concentrate our state research allocation, through the Higher Education Funding Council and the research councils, very sharply indeed on a relatively small number of universities.
	The only general conclusion that I shall give beyond that is to say that when investors in research—major companies and corporations—are considering their investments, they examine both the quality of the institution and the social and political environment in which it lives. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues need to work, as I know that they are, to get the best possible environment in Northern Ireland, so that people will want to invest there, in research and in other areas.

Damian Green: It is understandable that the Secretary of State does not want to comment on every speculation that we hear about top-up fees, even—or perhaps especially—those floated by his own Cabinet colleagues. Will he, however, rule out at least one of them, which came in briefing papers from his own Department? It is the idea that every student, including those from poor families, should be paying fees. That sits very oddly with every other part of the Government's rhetoric. Will the right hon. Gentleman disown that idea now?

Charles Clarke: There is not an idea to disown. What I will disown is any idea that we intend to put in a system that will discriminate further than the current one already does against people wanting to come through from poorer families. There is a massive waste of talent at the moment, involving people who have the capacity to benefit from a university education and to contribute to the economy, but who simply do not come through. The biggest possible indictment of the way in which the university system has evolved over these last years is that, as it has expanded, the proportion of children going into university from working class backgrounds has stayed the same. That is an indictment that we have to address, and I hope that we will do so.
	Finally, I am getting representations from various people on the Conservative Back Benches about the issues that we should be addressing, and I would advise the hon. Gentleman as a candid friend, if I may, that he should talk to his colleagues to ensure that he can speak in a united way for the Conservative party in this debate.

Damian Green: I would like to think that the Secretary of State can speak with a united voice for the whole Cabinet, but that is not true either, so he needs to look closer to home at his own problems. Indeed, it seems that he cannot even speak for his own Department. If he will not disown the document that I have here, all his talk about increasing access to higher education is so much hot air, given the ideas that his own Department is floating, his admission this morning and the admission of the Minister responsible for higher education last week. She said that the Government had not just failed, but widened the social divide in higher education. Does not that show that, six years in, the Government have failed miserably to meet their aim of getting disadvantaged students to university? Will the Secretary of State therefore answer the central question: why does he think—

Mr. Speaker: Order. When I rise to my feet I expect the hon. Gentleman to sit down. Perhaps we might also have a shorter answer this time.

Charles Clarke: My short answer, Mr. Speaker, is that there was a 36 per cent. reduction in funding per student under the Conservatives.

Colin Pickthall: Does my right hon. Friend agree, as I do, with our noble Friend Lord Hattersley, who wrote last week that a graduate tax was the only fair way of resolving the problems of funding in higher education, and that, to be effective, it would have to apply not only to future graduates but to present graduates such as my right hon. Friend and me?

Charles Clarke: I read what our noble Friend said with great interest, and I think that he has a real point. That is why, in the article that I wrote for The Independent on Sunday on this matter, I referred to the contribution of alumni to universities. It is striking to see how alumni in the United States make a major contribution to the endowment of universities—massively more than happens in this country. That raises precisely the question that my hon. Friend has asked, and we need to look at that matter directly.

David Rendel: On 8 February last year, in answer to a question on top-up fees from my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), the previous Secretary of State said:
	XWe introduced the new funding arrangements for students and for repayment precisely to avoid the universities levying additional charges."—[Official Report, 8 February 2001; Vol. 362, c. 1061.]
	What has changed?

Charles Clarke: What has changed is that we are having an overall review of all the various funding sources in the round. What remains the case in all respects is that the state will continue to provide, under any possible picture, the absolutely giant lion's share of university funding. The question that arises then is the balance between the contribution that the individual should make—if so, how much and by what route, which is the issue that we talked about earlier—and that which any alumnus might make by the process that we have discussed, as well as that which the economy should make in relation, for example, to business that moves forward. The best way to address that issue is to have a very open debate on it, which is what I am trying to stimulate and encourage. That is the way to proceed, and I wish that other opposition parties would participate openly in the debate rather than simply make opportunist points as they come up.

Eastern Region Schools

Bob Blizzard: What is the forecast spending by his Department on schools in the eastern region for 2002–03 to 2005–06.

Ivan Lewis: In 2002–03, education revenue funding in the eastern region totals approximately £2.8 billion. That includes standard spending assessment and grant. Capital funding in the region this year is over £351 million. Figures for general funding for next year and future years will be announced in December.

Bob Blizzard: Few schools in my area have not benefited from substantial building improvements and more information technology provision to create a better learning environment that results from the Government's decision to invest heavily in education. However, does my hon. Friend agree that successful learning also requires good classroom discipline, which means dealing effectively with disruptive pupils, but not just by throwing them out on the street, where they create more trouble? Will he invest part of the substantial sums that he has mentioned in more pupil referral units and consider in particular areas of the country such as mine, where provision is virtually non-existent?

Ivan Lewis: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that it is important that we continue to give head teachers the right to exclude severely disruptive pupils. Alongside that, however, we take responsibility for ensuring that excluded pupils have access to high quality and full-time education, which is why the Government were delighted to honour their commitment that, in September, all permanently excluded pupils would have access to a full-time education. We have 369 pupil referral units nationally and 60 new units have opened since January 2002. We intend for more to be developed as part of a co-ordinated behaviour and discipline strategy.

Richard Bacon: Are Ministers aware that although Wymondham high school in my constituency is 39th of 39 in terms of funding in the county of Norfolk, it is first of 39 in terms of GCSE results, despite having 19 mobile classrooms housing a third of the student population? Are they further aware that if Wymondham high school received just average funding, it would have an extra £300,000?
	The Minister for School Standards told me in a letter recently that he is unable to visit the school—I appreciate that South Shields is a long way from Norfolk—so will the Secretary of State visit Wymondham high school to see the excellent work being done by Mr. David Walker and his staff, as it is only five miles from the border of his constituency?

Ivan Lewis: The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to hear that the Secretary of State has visited the school and regards it as excellent. He is even prepared to visit it again.

Higher Education

Andrew Stunell: What assessment he has made of progress towards the Government's target of 50 per cent. of young people participating in higher education by 2010.

Margaret Hodge: Our latest estimate of participation in higher education in 2001–02 is 41.5 per cent. That could be revised upwards after the new census data are finalised and reflected. We need an increase of less than one percentage point each year to achieve our target.

Andrew Stunell: Since I tabled my question, the definition of the target has been changed yet again, for the fifth time. How long does the Minister expect the new target to be in place and can she explain how the House will ever know if it has been met?

Margaret Hodge: The simple answer is that the definition has not been changed and we are on course to meet our target.

John Cryer: Will the introduction of top-up fees make hitting the target less or more likely?

Margaret Hodge: Everything we do in the student funding review will be focused on ensuring that we get more and wider participation in higher education so that we can meet our target to promote inclusion and economic growth.

John Bercow: Given what the Minister told the hon. Member for Hornchurch (John Cryer), will she guarantee that in no circumstances, as Government policy evolves, will anyone on or below average earnings be obliged to pay a top-up fee?

Margaret Hodge: Like others, the hon. Gentleman will have to wait until we publish our strategy document in January. I look forward to discussing with him then whether he has any better proposals to ensure that universities are properly funded and that all young people, whatever their backgrounds, have access to them.

Graham Allen: I thank my hon. Friend—indeed, I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his entire team—for their close personal interest in and support for my constituency, which contains fewer young people going to university that any other United Kingdom constituency. Is my hon. Friend aware that 30 local educationalists met last Friday to discuss the problem, and that we shall be sending her a report? Is she also aware that one of our key problems is a culture of under-achievement in which parents do not aspire for their children? Will she note the contents of the report, and will she consider visiting my constituency to discuss the future of our young people with local residents and with those educationalists?

Margaret Hodge: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he is doing in his constituency to raise aspirations among young people and to widen participation. I look forward to visiting his constituency and talking to those who have joined him in his attempt to deal with the culture that he has described. I recognise the difficult problem to which he refers—that if we cannot persuade more young people to aim higher and see university as an option for them and not just for others, we shall have failed. My hon. Friend has set himself a major challenge in his constituency, and I support his aims.

Patrick McLoughlin: What is the drop-out level in universities today, and what was it four years ago?

Margaret Hodge: I am proud to say that the level has been maintained at 17 per cent. I am proud that, of all countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, we have the best record for keeping people in the system and ensuring that they acquire qualifications and degrees. We are never satisfied or complacent with where we are at, but we are proud of our record. The hon. Gentleman should join me in congratulating universities and students on achieving what they set out to achieve.

Child Employment

Chris Pond: What recent assessment he has made of the impact of children's employment on their educational attainment.

Stephen Twigg: There has been no recent assessment of the impact that children's employment has on their educational attainment. We recognise, however, that properly structured and regulated part-time work can help children's development and preparation for working life.

Chris Pond: May I urge my hon. Friend to undertake an assessment as a matter of some urgency? As he will know, evidence suggests that moderate hours of employment can be beneficial to school-leavers' performance, but that excessive hours can be damaging. Will he instruct the Office for Standards in Education to inform schools of the possible damaging of inappropriate or excessive working hours, and also ask it, when considering the performance of local education authorities, to take account of the resources that they invest in enforcing the law on children's employment as it stands?

Stephen Twigg: I am aware of my hon. Friend's long-standing interest in this matter, and I admire his balanced approach. I am not in a position to instruct Ofsted to do anything, and I am not sure that it is the right organisation to instruct; but I agree that serious problems have been identified in surveys by, for instance, the Trades Union Congress and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and I am happy to look into the matter further.

Education Funding

Ann Winterton: If he will make a statement on future education funding in Cheshire.

David Miliband: My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Local Government and the Regions will be making a statement on local authority funding, including education funding for the coming financial year, in early December, along with the provisional settlement for 2003–04.

Ann Winterton: Does the Minister appreciate that it is totally unacceptable for a child in Cheshire to be worth £355 less than a child of similar age in Hertfordshire, a county with an equivalent cost base, given that Cheshire is one of the worst-funded shire counties in the United Kingdom? Does he accept that it would be fair to allocate the same basic allowance to each child, and that extra weighting given because of, for instance, special needs, or given to areas with specific problems, should be transparent?

David Miliband: I can reassure the hon. Lady that I met some 200 heads from Cheshire at a conference in the north-west, who made a number of points about the funding system. A basic level of entitlement will apply to every child in the country, and the system for the allocation of additional educational needs that she asks about will indeed be transparent. It is based on independent survey work, which will ensure a proper scientific basis for the new funding system.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL

The Solicitor-General was asked—

CPS

Barry Gardiner: If she will make a statement on the effectiveness of the Crown Prosecution Service in the London area.

Harriet Harman: I believe that CPS London is becoming more effective. We regard sustaining the improvement in CPS London as essential, as Londoners are entitled to the protection of a good criminal justice system. London is the focus for much serious crime, and the reputation of CPS London sets the reputation of the CPS nationally.

Barry Gardiner: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for her response, but there is a particular aspect of efficiency on which most Londoners—indeed, most of the national population—would like an assurance: that those who perpetrate hoax calls during the fire brigades dispute are being pursued with the full vigour of the CPS in London, with a view to prosecution.

Harriet Harman: I can reassure the House that that is certainly the case. The Director of Public Prosecutions has issued guidance on charging in hoax call cases, which are being fast-tracked. I am not aware of any such cases in London, but in one case in west Yorkshire, a man is awaiting sentence for making hoax calls, and another man is being prosecuted in Staffordshire for making three hoax calls. A man has been arrested in Manchester, another is awaiting sentence in Cumbria, and an ongoing investigation is taking place in Lincolnshire. These cases are being taken very seriously, as the Prime Minister said on Wednesday.

Andrew Dismore: My right hon. and learned Friend will know that I take a particular interest in the issue of racism within the Crown Prosecution Service. Can she tell us what progress has been made in tackling racism within CPS London, with particular reference to the staff and the prosecution policy?

Harriet Harman: I welcome and endorse the stance that my hon. Friend has taken on the issue of race discrimination. It is very important that CPS London, and the CPS as a whole, is a fair and non-discriminatory employer that offers equal opportunities to all staff, both lawyers and non-lawyers. It is also very important that, whether dealing with defendants or victims, it adopts a non-racist and equal attitude. Since investigating the CPS, the Commission for Racial Equality has approved it as having proper procedures, which will be taken forward.

William Cash: The Attorney-General superintends the CPS; he acts as guardian of the public interest and of public safety, irrespective of party politics. In the wake of the firefighters' strike, there is secondary picketing on the tube in London, and the threat of it elsewhere. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said in the House that it was for the courts to decide whether such action is illegal. How can the courts so decide if the CPS, and in particular the Attorney-General, does not initiate a prosecution, and will he do so? Given that the talks have collapsed and that the firefighters' strike is on—and in the absence of CPS prosecution, particularly in respect of London—does the Attorney-General intend, in the light of his reply to me of 18 November, to seek an injunction under section 240 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, before it is too late?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman is right: in these matters, the Attorney-General's approach is concerned with the public interest, not the Government interest. However, if the question of initiating a prosecution arises, the police must first investigate and produce evidence of an offence for the CPS to consider. They have not done so in relation to any picketing offences, so it has not fallen to the CPS to consider files brought forward by the police concerning the suitability of prosecution.
	On the second point, about the Attorney-General's powers to seek an injunction in the courts against someone he suspects may be about to commit a criminal offence, if he does that his arguments will be set out to the court first, and thereafter he will explain to the Lords, and I will explain to the Commons, what the basis of that application was.

John Burnett: There remain grave misgivings about the conduct of the Crown Prosecution Service and others in the Burrell case. In the other place on 6 November, in reply to my noble Friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, the Attorney-General by implication criticised both the prosecution and the judge in relation to a public interest immunity application. Many would argue that more trenchant criticism was deserved. Will the Solicitor-General confirm that the application should never have been made and assure the House that steps will be taken to ensure that there is no further abuse of public interest immunity by the CPS?
	Finally—[Hon. Members: XAh."] Finally—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has done very well so far.

Harriet Harman: There has been no abuse of public interest immunity by the CPS. If there had been, the Attorney-General and I would have taken it with absolute seriousness. If the prosecution has information that could help the defence, it is under a duty to disclose it, and in no circumstances should such information be withheld. That is fundamental to our principles of justice. There was never any intention to proceed in the Burrell case withholding information that could have helped the defence. The question was whether the CPS was to drop the case, in which case disclosure did not arise, or whether it was to proceed, in which case there would have been disclosure. It would have been quite wrong to go ahead with the case without disclosing the information that the Queen had subsequently given.

David Winnick: But does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that there remains some public unease about the Burrell case, despite what she has said and what the Attorney-General has said in another place? That unease is certainly not confined to hardline republicans. Have any lessons been learned by the CPS in this case?

Harriet Harman: The Crown Prosecution Service learns lessons from all its cases, as is right and proper. I reassure my hon. Friend and the House that there is no need for any public unease about this case. If anything was going wrong with prosecutions, the Attorney-General and I would be absolutely on to it, I would disclose it fully to the House, and we would want action taken to sort it out. That is not so in this case. I hope that hon. Members will accept that, and feel reassured accordingly.

Fraud

Anne McIntosh: What recent representations she has received on prosecution of serious fraud cases.

Henry Bellingham: When she next expects to meet representatives of small firms organisations to discuss policy on prosecutions of fraud.

Harriet Harman: I receive letters about serious fraud cases, and the Attorney-General and I regularly meet the director of the Serious Fraud Office, Ros Wright. I have not met small firms' representatives specifically to discuss fraud, but I am well aware that it is a problem not only for big companies and rich individuals but for small business and people on low incomes. The work that the CPS and the SFO do on fraud is very important.

Anne McIntosh: Is the Solicitor-General aware that, in their response to the Criminal Justice Bill, the General Council of the Bar and the Criminal Bar Association of England have said:
	XWe oppose the suggestion of trial by judge alone in cases of suspected jury interference and fraud cases."?
	Does she agree that trial by jury must be maintained for all fraud cases? Were we to dispense with it, it could lead to a flood of actions for breach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Harriet Harman: I am aware of the views of the Bar Council on all aspects of the Criminal Justice Bill. We take its views extremely seriously. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the Bill emanates from the Home Office. There will be a Second Reading and a full debate next week. I suggest that she raises those issues with the Home Secretary, and in the House next week.

Henry Bellingham: Is the Solicitor-General aware that small firms often suffer disproportionately from fraud? There have been many scams recently, including the Nigerian e-mail scams, the UBR reduction offer scam and the grant application offer scam. Such scams sap morale among small firms, and divert attention from the creation of wealth and jobs. Is the right hon. and learned Lady going to make an effort to tackle the problem and streamline the prosecution of fraud process?

Harriet Harman: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who is right to say that fraud is not a victimless, technical offence. It can cause redundancies, real hardship and the loss of homes and businesses. As far as we can tell, it costs the economy about £14 billion a year. We work closely on this matter with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office and the Treasury. We need a cross-Government approach, and sufficient resources to investigate and prosecute fraud. I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter today.

Business of the House

Eric Forth: Will the Leader of the House give the business for next week?

Robin Cook: The business of the House for next week is as follows:
	Monday 2 December—Until 7 o'clock there will be an Opposition half day [unallotted] on a motion in the name of the Democratic Unionist party relating to policing in Northern Ireland.
	A debate on the convention on the future of Europe.
	Tuesday 3 December—Second Reading of the Communications Bill, followed by a motion relating to estimates.
	Wednesday 4 December—Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill.
	Thursday 5 December—Estimates [1st allotted Day].
	There will be a debate on the Government's drugs policy. Details will be given in the Official Report.
	At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
	Friday 6 December—The House will not be sitting.
	The House will also wish to know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and the Regions will deliver a statement on the local government settlement on Thursday 5 December.
	The provisional business for the following week will be:
	Monday 9 December—Second Reading of the Extradition Bill. Followed by proceedings on the Consolidated Fund Bill. Followed by proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill.
	Tuesday 10 December—Second Reading of the European Parliament (Representation) Bill.
	Wednesday 11 December—Motion on the retirement of the Clerk of the House.
	Followed by a debate on European affairs on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
	Thursday 12 December—Debate on DEFRA issues on a substantive motion covering agriculture and the environment.
	Friday 13 December—The House will not be sitting.
	I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for Thursday 12 December will be a debate on the XPowering Future Vehicles" strategy.

Hon Members: Oh!

Eric Forth: I thank the Leader of the House, especially for that last item, which excited the House hugely.
	Recently, we in the House of Commons have been through a so-called modernisation process. Our shift patterns have been changed, and we have a new single control centre—the Government Whips office. We have reduced the opportunities for second jobs and we are also about to reduce our head count, as there will be fewer Scottish MPs. In light of all that, when will Labour Members get a pay rise of 16 per cent?
	Just the other day in the other place, Baroness Symons said that
	Xthe Foreign Secretary continues to have overall responsibility for Government policy on the European Union, including the convention. The Secretary of State is the Government's representative to the convention, and will therefore report to Parliament on his role in the convention."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 November 2002; Vol. 642, c. 635.]
	A number of matters arise from that to which the Leader of the House would do well to give some thought. First, two Secretaries of State are responsible for one thing—the convention. Secondly, we have a Minister of State who answers oral and written questions on the convention in this House. Next Monday, however, one of the two Secretaries of State to whom I referred, the Secretary of State for Wales, will lead the debate on the convention. However, the real question is this: how can two Secretaries of State be responsible for exactly the same thing? More importantly, how will we have an opportunity in this House regularly to question and hold to account the Secretary of State for Wales on his role in the convention? The Foreign Office may well answer questions routinely at Question Time, but we want to get at the main man—we want the Secretary of State for Wales to be here, regularly, to answer questions. How will the Leader of the House arrange for that to happen?
	On 26 November, the Deputy Prime Minister said:
	XWe have campaigned long and hard for Members of Parliament to have only one job in the House, and that is what I have done for the past 30 years since I have been a Member."—[Official Report, 26 November 2002; Vol. 395, c. 183.]
	Can the Leader of the House confirm that the Deputy Prime Minister's rather astonishing statement represents the Government's policy on this important matter? Can he clarify whether the recent modernisation moves are a sinister hidden agenda to ensure that Members can and should have no interests outside this House?

Robin Cook: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for inciting bids for a 16 per cent. pay rise. I have consulted the representative of the control centre with me on the Front Bench, and he wishes to discourage any such anticipation on the part of my colleagues.
	Like many other Members, I have been offended to see claims that Members of Parliament have had a 40 per cent. pay increase. That may have come as something of a surprise to them. For the record, and for the avoidance of doubt, since the 1997 election, the first four years showed an average increase in MPs' pay of 3 per cent. In 2001 and again in 2002 we have had increases of around 5 per cent., which were, of course, the product of precisely the kind of independent review that is being resisted by the Fire Brigades Union. I hope that that will restore some balance to some of the imbalanced reports that we have seen.
	I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to explain to him the principle of collective responsibility, which is the basis on which the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs work in total harmony. It is a principle that may have escaped the right hon. Gentleman, since I believe that he holds the record in the previous Parliament for rebelling on the Tory Benches against the Tory Whip. We, however, have a situation of total harmony and unity between those two Secretaries of State, both of whom speak for the Government. The right hon. Gentleman asks how Members can question the Secretary of State for Wales. My right hon. Friend will be here to take part in the debate on the convention of the future of Europe. If I may say so, that debate is the result of a request at business questions that we should have a debate on the Floor of the House on the future of the convention of Europe. For that reason, I hoped that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House would welcome it.
	I am frightfully sorry, but the right hon. Gentleman's third point has slipped my mind.

Eric Forth: The Deputy Prime Minister.

Robin Cook: The Deputy Prime Minister speaks, as always, with great wisdom on these matters. I do not resile at all from what he said on that point. Indeed, if hon. Members consult Hansard about our debate on the change of hours, I made the very point that those who choose to spend their morning working on other matters should not dictate the hours for those in the House who are full-time professional Members of Parliament. The balance of the House has changed during my membership of it. The majority of Members are full-time Members of Parliament who are here on the precincts in the morning, and that certainly includes those on the Labour Benches. Of course we have no proposal to ban those who carry out other work. It is a matter for them and also for their constituents, who will no doubt bear it in mind.

Paul Tyler: The Leader of the House has, on many occasions since he took up his present post, emphasised the need for better scrutiny of the Government's legislation and has said that better scrutiny makes for better government. Can I draw his attention to the fact that the Criminal Justice Bill, which was published a week ago, with 293 pages, 273 clauses and 26 schedules, still has no explanatory notes? Members of Parliament who seek to get to grips with this controversial and complicated Bill are receiving no help whatever. Since it is not apparently to be the subject of any pre-legislative scrutiny, does the right hon. Gentleman think that this is a good example of what he has been promoting? Does he not think that Ministers should be told firmly that they are not to publish Bills until the explanatory notes are available?
	I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the fact that, despite the useful change to ensure that written ministerial statements are listed properly instead of being hidden in the charade of planted questions, of the 22 listed in today's Order Paper only 18 were available in the Library immediately preceding business questions. I know that he understands that the purpose of the change—as the Modernisation Committee pointed out—was to ensure that all Members of the House, not just those who planted questions, were made aware of what was intended in the written statements. Will he please examine the matter again?
	I understand that yesterday there was a written statement on wind power policy, which was accompanied by a useful briefing document. However, sufficient supplies of that document were not available yesterday for all Members to be able to read it. That completely undermines the proposals made by the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee, so will he look into that?

Robin Cook: The hon. Gentleman's references to power confirm what a high-powered Government we are.
	I am aware of the difficulties in providing an explanatory memorandum for the Criminal Justice Bill and I have expressed my concern that it should be made available to Members at the earliest stage. I am advised that the text will be supplied today to the Clerk of Legislation in the Public Bill Office who is responsible for ordering it to be printed and laid before the House, and it will be available from tomorrow. However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point. It should have been made available sooner.
	I felt that the hon. Gentleman slightly forced his point when he said that only 18 of the 22 statements were available. To put it the other way around, it means that when he inquired—the situation may have changed since then—only four of the 22 were not available. The House should keep a sense of perspective. As I have said before, we aim to get all the written statements in by 12.30, but in the old days of planted questions, the planted answers would have been available only from 12.30 and many of them would not have been produced until long after that. We should not regard the change as a step backwards; on the contrary, it is very much a step forward in terms of transparency and ease of access and identification in Hansard—witness the way in which Members are now able to tease me on the point.

Ben Chapman: My right hon. Friend may be aware that Candy Domestic Appliances Ltd., based in my constituency, recently announced the closure of its plant in Bromborough. He may also be aware that the company has made major investment in the site and that the unions and the work force have been exemplary in reaching productivity agreements to maintain and improve competitiveness. Despite all their efforts, however, the competitive disadvantage of the pound-euro exchange rate has proved an insurmountable barrier, and as a result about 200 dedicated and hard-working people may find that their jobs are at risk. Will my right hon. Friend try to arrange for an early debate on the pound-euro exchange rate, as Candy is not alone in facing that often insurmountable barrier to competition?

Robin Cook: On my hon. Friend's specific question, he will have heard the pre-Budget report yesterday, when the Chancellor said that the Government would complete their economic assessment in June. Whatever the outcome of that assessment may be, I am sure that the House will want to hold a number of debates on the issue.
	On the issue that affects my hon. Friend's constituency, may I record our concern and regret that after such sterling efforts by both work force and management it has not been possible for the plant to continue? I know that my hon. Friend has worked hard to try to secure a future for the company in his constituency and that he will do all that he can to ensure that every possible provision is made for those men and women who may be facing redundancy. I can assure him that he will receive full support from Departments in those efforts.

George Young: Further to the question put by the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman), the Leader of the House will know that during the many years that he has been a Member, it has been our custom to debate, in the autumn, in Government time, either the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement or the autumn statement. The Leader of the House is denying us that opportunity this year. Will the House thus not conclude that, given the changing fortunes of the economy, as set out yesterday, the Government no longer wish to be held to account on that subject?

Robin Cook: I am not denying the House anything. I have always sought very hard to accommodate the wishes of the House to debate matters of common interest to hon. Members on both sides of the House. As I have just said, we have a full programme of Second Reading debates, which reflects the Government's activism and the crowded legislative programme that we have announced, but I am well aware of the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises. I will discuss it with my colleagues, and we will, of course, consider what opportunities we can find to remind the House of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's excellent record in maintaining a sound economy, with the lowest inflation for a generation, the lowest unemployment that any of us can remember and the fastest growth of any of the big economies in the world.

Paul Truswell: My right hon. Friend will be aware that yesterday the Chancellor announced a review of employers' liability insurance. Will he arrange for an early statement to the House to spell out exactly what that review's remit will be? For example, will it address not only the huge escalation in premiums, but the way that they are set? Will it also address the fact that many companies in my constituency are experiencing grave difficulty achieving renewals and that, even when their policies are renewed, they are fearful of making claims unless they face non-renewal in future? In the interests of joined-up government, will the Government consider the wider range of essential insurance policies that businesses need, for which they also face huge escalations in cost?

Robin Cook: My hon. Friend helpfully underlines the importance of the review and why it is necessary. I am well aware of the concern among a number of hon. Members about the increase in premiums. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (John Cryer) raised this issue only the other week. My hon. Friend requests a statement; we will not be short of statements to the House in the weeks ahead, but I certainly think that this may be an occasion when, at an appropriate time, the Treasury may wish to consider using the new innovation of written statements, which we have provided.

Michael Fabricant: May I invite the Leader of the House to spend an evening with me in Lichfield? We could perhaps go to one of its elegant restaurants—perhaps the Eastern Eye—and then to Lichfield cathedral to hear one of the many concerts that are put on there. Perhaps then he might like to speak to his right hon. and hon. Friends about the contents of the Licensing Bill, which, if passed, will mean no more concerts in Lichfield cathedral and no more Lichfield festival; nor will there be any concerts in Worcester or Hereford cathedrals, or many others in the United Kingdom. When will the Licensing Bill appear for its Second Reading in the House?

Robin Cook: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his invitation to dinner, which I shall communicate to my diary secretary, with my secret marking to put it at the bottom of the pile.
	On the issue of substance that he raises, I reassure his constituents that the proposed provision on licensing public events in places of worship does not embrace any religious act of worship, for which no licence will be required, and that it will permit churches to hold five events a year, on each of three days, making a total of 15 days without licence. Of course the premises may be regularly used not for acts of worship, but for secular entertainment, however worthy and excellent.

Michael Fabricant: It is very worthy.

Robin Cook: I am sure that it is extremely worthy and extremely excellent, so the hon. Gentleman owes it to his constituents to ensure that they can hear it with the peace of mind of knowing that those premises are safe and that they can leave them in the event of an emergency. For that reason, any responsible Government must ensure adequate provision for places of public entertainment. If there were to be—God forbid—any disaster in Lichfield cathedral, the hon. Gentleman would be the first to criticise the Government for not safeguarding it.

Jimmy Wray: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 96, on the child rescue alert scheme that has been piloted in Sussex?
	[That this House welcomes the launch of Child Rescue Alert which will interrupt radio and television transmissions with urgent appeals if a child is in real danger of harm or death; feels that the system which is being pioneered in Sussex will save many lives; believes that the scheme will assist in the capture of the abductors of children before they can cause any harm; and furthermore hopes that this scheme will be used throughout the United Kingdom as soon as possible.]
	Given that we live in a world of paedophiles and perverts who put children at risk, will he make time to debate the scheme when the report comes from Sussex so that we can implement it throughout the United Kingdom?

Robin Cook: My hon. Friend will be aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department has just made a statement on sexual offences and unveiled a White Paper, which will in turn, of course, result in legislation. His proposals have been widely welcomed. Of course that will provide the House with an opportunity to debate such matters further, and initiatives of the kind that my hon. Friend describes should certainly be considered carefully and assessed to discover whether they can have wider application.

Angela Browning: Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent debate on the cost of living indices? I ask that because it is about time that we had an updated view of what people spend their income on week by week. He has just announced that we will hear about the local government settlement next Thursday, but it is becoming ever more difficult to explain to pensioners why, on one index, the state pension is increased, but by an amount that does not even cover the increase in their council tax bill. Whether council tax, the purchase of a car or mortgage interest should be included in the various formulae should be debated, and those formulae brought up to date.

Robin Cook: A number of issues need to be discussed and examined, and I have no doubt that the matter will be discussed inside and outside the House, particularly in relation to whether the general retail prices index adequately reflects the spending of a pensioner household. Having said that, I would make two points. First, whatever measure we have of RPI, inflation is lower than it has been for three decades, which is an achievement that we intend to maintain. Secondly, under this Government, substantial funds have been made available to local government in a way that was not experienced under the previous Conservative Government. Local authorities must live within their means, and must consider carefully decisions on taxation within their remit, but there is no local authority in Britain that has not done much better over the past five years than it could have dreamt of doing in the previous five years of the Conservative Government.

Alan Simpson: Could the House have an opportunity to debate the document XAgenda for Change" that appears to have been launched in today's press. It would seem to offer a public sector pay settlement that is based on double-digit pay increases for the lowest-paid public sector workers, increased investment to raise the standards of public services, a modernisation agenda written by the unions themselves, and, crucially, no job losses. In the space that exists in the current firefighters' dispute, will the Prime Minister invite the Fire Brigades Union to No. 10 Downing street to discuss its agenda for change and to help get us out of the hole into which we appear to have been digging ourselves?

Robin Cook: On my hon. Friend's latter point, we have repeatedly invited the Fire Brigades Union to return to the negotiating table and to discuss proposals for modernisation. Those modernisation proposals must not simply be the agenda of the Fire Brigades Union—which it is welcome to put on the table—but must embrace the interesting proposals in the Bain review on where real efficiency and productivity gains can be made. For instance, there could be an end to the current practice by which full-time firefighters decline to get on the same fire engine as part-time firefighters—

Alan Simpson: Not true.

Robin Cook: I am afraid that that is the case.
	On my hon. Friend's other point, I presume from what he says that he welcomes the conclusion of the XAgenda for Change" outcome. I certainly think that there is much to commend it to the House and to the public, particularly in the way that it will address some of those who are lowest paid in the public service. I hope that my hon. Friend will find it in himself wholeheartedly to welcome and support that, without necessarily using it as a ramp for other settlements.

Martin Smyth: The Leader of the House will be aware that in a knowledge-based age our best assets are well-trained young people. Could we therefore have a statement from the Minister responsible for education in Northern Ireland on why, when some young people are told that no discretionary awards are available, education boards are not able to award all the money that has been allocated for discretionary awards? Is there a case to be made for lowering the standard of assessment so that those awards can be effectively used?

Robin Cook: I know that my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for education in Northern Ireland is active in trying to make sure that we build on the success that has been secured in the Northern Ireland education system. I shall happily draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to her attention, and I am sure that she will want to communicate directly with him.

Malcolm Savidge: I recognise the pressures of the Government's legislative programme, but could consideration sometimes be given to allowing two days for debates on vital issues such as Iraq? Last Monday, despite a stringent time limit on speeches, which tended to restrict interventions, many Members were still waiting to speak at the end of the debate, while others had given up. Surely such momentous matters merit thorough consideration.

Robin Cook: I do not disagree that the matter requires thorough consideration and I know that there is substantial interest in it throughout the House. There is significant pressure on the available time in the Chamber for business of the House and, in present circumstances, I cannot hold out the promise of a two-day debate on Iraq or any other subject. However, I am mindful of the interest in such matters and will obviously bear in mind how much time we can provide in future.

Angela Watkinson: Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on procedures for the listing of buildings? It is possible for a building to be listed without the knowledge of the owner and without disclosure of the identity of the applicant. That has happened to a church in my constituency, Cranham All Saints, which wanted to knock down and rebuild a Victorian church hall that had gone beyond the point of easy maintenance and repair. It has caused enormous complications in the planning process and there seem to be injustices in the listing procedures.

Robin Cook: No doubt there are opportunities for ensuring that the process works better and more transparently, and there will be a chance to examine such issues in the forthcoming planning Bill. As a matter of principle, the consent of the owner of a building should not be a condition of the listing of a building. There will be times when the opinion of a building's owners is at variance with that of the general community on the value of the building, its importance to the community and townscape, and the importance of preserving it.

John Cryer: My right hon. Friend will know that there have been two recent debates on local government finance. Both were curtailed and many hon. Members did not have the chance to put the case for their boroughs or districts. Most importantly, I have not been able to put the case for the London borough of Havering, which has traditionally been caned by the standard spending assessment, although we have done marginally better in the past five years. Will it be possible to debate the statement when it is made on 5 December?

Robin Cook: It would be wrong to have a debate on 5 December because the figures will have only just been shared with the House. We announced that statement today because we know of the considerable interest among Members, such as my hon. Friend, in what will be allocated to their local authority, and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Local Government and the Regions was keen that there should be advance notice of that. I look forward to a well attended statement next Thursday.

Mark Francois: Will the Leader of the House find time for an early debate on the pressing issue of shortages of general practitioners around the United Kingdom, not least in my constituency of Rayleigh, which has the fourth highest ratio of patients to GPs? The debate would allow us to press the Government on their proposals for increasing the supply of domestically trained GPs instead of relying, as they increasingly do, on the sticking-plaster solution of desperately trying to recruit doctors from abroad to plug the gaps.

Robin Cook: I gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that more GPs are in Britain now than ever before and more people are in training to become GPs than ever before. There are certainly more than there were when the Government he supported were in office. That is a substantial step forward.
	Of course we recognise that things are not satisfactory in every part of Britain and we shall continue to address the problem. That is why we have considered a number of solutions, especially providing financial incentives for people to become GPs and to stay GPs. We are looking at where it might be possible to find people with the appropriate training and standards to come to Britain to help us to achieve our objective of ensuring that we serve the British public. We will consider all solutions, not just one. Let us not lose sight of the fact that more people are working as GPs than was ever the case under the Conservative Government.

Bob Blizzard: Has my right hon. Friend seen this week's report by Lord Carlile, who was appointed by the Government to oversee the workings of the Terrorism Act 2000? It described the network of small ports and small airstrips in this country as a Xsoft underbelly" that could be exploited by terrorists trying to smuggle in deadly materials. As someone who represents a small port, Lowestoft, which I know my right hon. Friend has visited, may I ask him whether a Minister could come to the House to make a statement about the report, to reassure people and to explain what can be done to minimise the risk identified?

Robin Cook: My hon. Friend does his constituency an injustice: Lowestoft is not that small a port, but one of considerable significance. I am aware of Lord Carlile's report, which is the product of the new system that we have put in place. We welcome the general tenor of the report. It makes a number of detailed suggestions, and we will want to consider carefully how we respond to them. I can assure my hon. Friend that the matter is being taken very seriously in government, and we will certainly want to respond positively where we can.

Pete Wishart: As a patriotic Scot, the Leader of the House will know that on Saturday we celebrate St. Andrew's day, so I wonder whether he is open to the suggestion that in future we hold a general debate on Scottish issues on or around St. Andrew's day, similar to that afforded to our Welsh colleagues on St. David's day.

Hon. Members: What about St. George's day?

Robin Cook: Of course I am well aware that Saturday is St. Andrew's day; indeed, I intend to spend it celebrating in my constituency at a St. Andrew's day dinner in the excellent club of the very successful Livingston football team. I hear the bid for St. George's day too, and I say to hon. Members that not a week goes by in Parliament without our debating issues of considerable interest to Scotland and to England. I will take the hon. Gentleman's suggestion on board. St. Andrew's day will not come round for another full year and we will have to weigh the matter then against the pressure of business. I am confident, however, that it will fall on the same date as it has this year.

John Robertson: My right hon. Friend will be aware that at Prime Minister's questions yesterday the Prime Minister answered a question on hoax calls by saying that 7 per cent. of calls are hoaxes. That figure applies only to the present situation with the fire service; the total proportion, as BT intimated to me today, is 50 per cent., which means that there are about 12.5 million hoax calls a year. Will my right hon. Friend secure a statement or a debate about that practice, which puts people's lives at risk?

Robin Cook: I do not think that by referring to the figure of 7 per cent. the Prime Minister was in any way trying to minimise the scale of the diversion and danger caused by hoax calls. Even 1 per cent. is far too many. I am sure that all hon. Members would join me in deploring those who frivolously and wilfully divert important resources, with what could be life-threatening results. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government and the forces of law and order take a severe view of that practice, but I hope that the community will exert pressure to make sure that people realise that it is in their own interests to behave responsibly and not to wantonly misuse the rare resources available to deal with emergencies.

Andrew MacKay: First, may I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am sure that the whole House is pleased to see his Parliamentary Private Secretary in his place, further dispelling press reports that he was a rebel on Iraq?
	Secondly, on a much more serious note, the Leader of the House will be aware that the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates daily. Surely, as we have responsibilities in that country, it is important that Ministers come to the Dispatch Box to make statements and to lead debates in the weeks ahead.

Robin Cook: First, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that of course I always rise with greater ease of mind knowing that my back is being safely guarded. He also gives me an opportunity to put right the error in the Hansard of the other night: if he consults the Division list he will find that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) allegedly appeared in both Divisions. I am authorised by my hon. Friend to state that he voted only once, and it was with the Government.
	On the serious issue of Zimbabwe, I fully share the right hon. Gentleman's concern. The situation continues to deteriorate. Familiar though I am with the behaviour of the Mugabe regime, even I have great difficulty comprehending a regime that will deny food aid to starving people on the basis of political preference, and I am sure that everyone in the House would condemn that activity. We will continue to do all that we can to exert international pressure for a more responsible attitude on the part of that regime.

David Heath: Can I return to the subject of employers and public liability insurance? Can the Leader of the House find time for a debate? For some months I have been trying without success to secure an Adjournment debate on the subject. In my constituency, not unlike others, businesses are going out of business simply because of the exorbitant premiums that they are being asked to pay or because they cannot get insurance which they are required by law to have. The opaque reference yesterday from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a review by the Department for Work and Pensions suggested that that should be informed by the experiences of hon. Members, who I am sure have useful information to impart to the Government.

Robin Cook: I am relieved to tell the House that I have no influence on the allocation of Adjournment debates and do not seek any, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will persist in the hope of greater success in future. On the issue of substance, he raised a matter that has now been raised in business questions in the past two weeks by a number of Members. Plainly, it is a serious constituency issue in many quarters. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will note what has been said. Plainly, the Department for Work and Pensions will wish to consider an appropriate follow-up to the Chancellor's remarks to provide fuller information on the intended review.

Julian Lewis: Will the Leader of the House consider approaching the Minister for Sport for a statement or preferably a debate on the growing feeling that it is time to consider introducing safe standing areas at Premiership football grounds? That debate has been called for by The Southern Daily Echo, which serves Southampton and the New Forest. Experienced people such as former Southampton manager Lawrie McMenemy, who was present at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, told the Echo's campaign:
	XThere is enough evidence now to prove that standing areas should be allowed and would not cause any problems if they were in areas behind the seated portions of the ground."
	This is an occasion where a past tragedy should not be allowed to obscure the advances in technology that enable safe seating to be considered in future.

Robin Cook: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the reasoned way in which he made his point. My own experience of attending Livingston football matches is in a modern all-seater stadium—[Interruption.] No, there is a large attendance, and we have sought to foster a family atmosphere, which is important and provides for the future of football audiences. There are divided views on the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman. I have long realised that if I wish to maintain a position as a consensual Leader of the House I should avoid expressing too strong an opinion about football, but I will convey his point to the Minister for Sport.

John Bercow: Can we please have a debate on small businesses? The annual staging of such a debate was once an established and welcome feature of the affairs of the House. Given that more than 99 per cent. of companies in the United Kingdom employ fewer than 100 people; that they account for approximately 50 per cent. of the private sector work force; and that they generate roughly two fifths of our national output, does the right hon. Gentleman concede that we need urgently to consider the sea of regulation facing them, as it is deeper and more hazardous than any with which they have previously had to contend?

Robin Cook: On the last point, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that for a period I spoke for the Opposition on trade and industry at the Dispatch Box. During that time, I witnessed a flood of regulation from the Conservative Government.

John Bercow: That was not my fault.

Robin Cook: I am happy to accept that the hon. Gentleman is not responsible for anything done by the previous Government, but we yearn for the day when an Opposition Member stands up and says, XIt was my responsibility."
	On the issue of a debate on small businesses, I am happy to take that on board and consider it against other competing priorities. Yes, we would very much welcome an opportunity to debate initiatives that we have taken on small business, particularly the introduction of the zero tax rate for small businesses, which only yesterday was extended to many more small businesses and has been widely welcomed in today's press.

Airports Consultation

Alistair Darling: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short statement about the Government's consultation on airports capacity.
	As I set out in my statement to the House in July, the Government intend to publish a White Paper on air travel. As part of that, we will set out our views on how much additional airport capacity is needed and where it should be sited. In advance of the White Paper, we published seven consultation papers seeking views on a wide number of options throughout the United Kingdom. Part of that consultation included consideration of capacity in the south-east of England. A number of options were canvassed. One of the key questions was the importance of an international hub airport in the south-east and where it should be sited.
	As I said in July, one option was to build at Heathrow, a second option was at Stansted, and a third option was a completely new airport at Cliffe. As well as the question of a hub airport, the south-east consultation paper looked at other matters, including where any new capacity should be located. I told the House in July that I had decided to exclude further development at Gatwick because of a legal agreement ruling out the construction of a new runway before 2019. That decision was challenged last month, when Kent county council and Medway council applied for a judicial review of that decision. On Tuesday the court upheld that challenge.
	It might be useful to remind the House why the Government took the decision to exclude Gatwick. I also want to set out how the Government intend to proceed in the light of the court's ruling. The facts in relation to the Government's decision were set out in a witness statement put before the court. I have arranged to place a copy of that statement in the Library. I have also sent a copy of it to the principal Opposition spokesmen, along with this statement, in the usual way.
	Briefly, the facts are these. The Government, prior to publishing the consultation papers, had to consider whether to include proposals in relation to Gatwick airport. In particular, they had to consider whether they should ask Parliament to overturn an agreement made in 1979 between the then publicly owned British Airports Authority and West Sussex county council.
	The Government decided that it would be highly undesirable to do so as a matter of policy. We considered it important that people should be able to continue to rely on such a legally binding agreement. Accordingly, the Government reached the conclusion in respect of the 1979 agreement that although they could ask Parliament to overturn it, they would consider it appropriate to do so only if there was demonstrably no alternative way forward. That was clearly not the case, having regard to the other options before them.
	As the House knows, the court took a different view. It held that people ought to have an opportunity to present their case on expansion at Gatwick. As I made clear in my written statement yesterday, although the court granted leave for the Government to appeal against this decision, I have decided not to do so. Inevitably, an appeal would be a lengthy and prolonged process and would result in an extensive period of uncertainty for people up and down the country. That is in no one's interest.
	I have therefore decided that the consultation, due to end on 30 November, will be kept open until we have consulted on options in relation to Gatwick. It is only two days since we received the judgment and its implications need to be considered further, but I wanted to keep the House informed about how I intend to proceed. I intend to publish a further paper, following the decision to include Gatwick in the consultation. I will publish these further options in the new year. The consultation period will run for four months from then.
	It follows, therefore, that all representations received so far will be considered, together with additional representations that follow from the decision to include Gatwick. As I told the House on 19 November, this is an opportunity for anyone in the country to express their views on all the options in the consultation, as well as to put forward reasonable alternatives. Inevitably the White Paper, which I had hoped to publish in the first part of next year, will be delayed, at least until the autumn of next year.
	The Government took the decision to exclude Gatwick because they wanted to honour an agreement. The court has taken a different view. Rather than contest that judgment, I have decided that the right thing to do is to accept it and consult, but inevitably and regrettably, it means an extended period of uncertainty for everyone. The important thing now is to get on and reach a conclusion on what is a critical matter for the future of this country.

Tim Collins: May I thank the Secretary of State for his typical courtesy in providing a copy of his statement in advance? I should also like to wish him a happy birthday. I suspect that this judgment is not the birthday present he would have chosen, but I none the less offer him my congratulations.
	Does the Secretary of State accept that his entire consultation exercise has been flawed from the start? The High Court's conclusion that it was irrational comes on top of criticism from many quarters that it was rushed and based on inaccurate and misleading figures; contained misprints that required copies to be recalled and reprinted; involved four-week delays for some people in getting hold of copies of the consultation documents; and included questionnaires that many people saw as profoundly loaded.
	Is it not the case that Gatwick was not the only important option to be left out? Why was the preferred option of Birmingham airport omitted? Why did the right hon. Gentleman consult on a sort of runway layout for Heathrow that even BAA Heathrow does not want? Will he comment on the belief of many in the Rugby area that some of the figures in his documents for that area relate to a completely different site two miles away from the one described? Given the immense importance of the issue to large numbers of communities, many of which had no idea before 23 July of what was being contemplated for them, would it not have been more sensible from the start to allow more than a 16-week period—most of it in the summer—for people to respond?
	We very much welcome the Secretary of State's decision in the light of the court judgment to extend the consultation. The Opposition were calling for such an extension even in advance of the judgment. However, will he clarify one point from his statement? Does the extension apply to the whole country or only to the south-eastern regional consultation? Does he recognise that many groups, and not only those in the south-east, will wish to revisit their evidence in the light of the re-inclusion of Gatwick?
	Does the Secretary of State accept that, while he is right to say that decisions cannot be indefinitely delayed, they must be taken in the right and proper way and after genuine consultation? Will he pledge to publish the results of the full consultation well in advance of reaching conclusions, so that everyone can judge the basis on which he will make decisions? Will he give an undertaking that he and his Ministers will visit every affected site before announcing conclusions? Does he not recognise that he owes those communities that assurance at least?
	Does the Secretary of State accept that if his final conclusions are to be seen as fair and reasonable by all involved, he and his Department need to listen more, consult properly and start getting things right, rather than hopelessly wrong?

Alistair Darling: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his good wishes in respect of my birthday. Last year, my former private office was kind enough to present me with a CD containing the greatest hits of Leonard Cohen. This year, the courts have not been quite so kind to me. I have always found Leonard Cohen more uplifting than many court judgments.
	Let me deal with the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. I remind him that when I announced the consultation in July, he was kind enough in making a very reasoned response on behalf of the Opposition to commend me for the spirit in which I had launched the consultation. He rightly went on to urge me to bring it to a swift conclusion. I have endeavoured to do that, but I recognise that a problem has arisen in relation to Gatwick that I must deal with.
	On the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised, Birmingham airport and options there are included in the consultation, as is Heathrow. I have always made it clear—I did so not only in July, but as recently as November, when we had an extended Question Time on this matter—that it is open to people not only to respond to what the Government canvassed in their options, but to bring forward any alternatives. After all, we are considering one of the most profoundly important decisions that will be taken in this Parliament about what to do in relation not only to a hub airport, but to other airport capacity. That is why I agree with him that it is important to get it right. People must remember that they can make whatever representations they think appropriate. The Government will then publish a White Paper, but afterwards, any decision to build an airport will be taken on a commercial basis by that airport's operator. It is not as if the White Paper is the end of the road. What it does is provide a framework against which everyone can plan.
	I regret that as a result of the judgment, the process will take longer than I anticipated. It will give people four months longer. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the consultation was open to the whole country or only the south-east. The whole consultation remains open, because, manifestly, a decision on any of the London airports has implications for the rest of the country.
	The whole consultation will therefore remain open and I hope that people will enter into the spirit of it by accepting that they have a chance to make representations on Gatwick, but that, for everyone's good, we must try to reach a conclusion by the end of next year. Waiting longer is in nobody's interests, especially those who might be affected by expansion.

Don Foster: I join the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) in thanking the Secretary of State for advance notice of the statement and wishing him a happy birthday. However, he has left us dangling in uncertainty about his birthday present from his new private office.
	Although I welcome and acknowledge the need for the Secretary of State's decision, does he recognise that the High Court's judgment knocks a further hole in a set of deeply flawed consultation documents? Does it not provide an opportunity for the new documents to tackle not only the Gatwick issue but some of the other flaws? Does he accept that the current documents are based on the long discredited predict-and-provide approach rather than managing demand? Does he also accept that the growth figures in the documents unjustifiably assume that the current tax benefits to the airline industry, such as no aviation fuel duty or no VAT on tickets will continue, when that is unlikely?
	Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is an incorrect assumption about the economic benefits to continued air expansion in this country and that it is not necessarily beneficial for Britain to become an international airport transit lounge? Does he further accept that the new document provides an opportunity to cover sustainability, which is missing from the current documents? Is it not now time for the Government to live up to their categorical commitment that aviation should meet its external costs?
	The Secretary of State has an opportunity to correct some of the flaws; let us hope that he does that.

Alistair Darling: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his good wishes. For those who are interested, my new private office gave me a nice train set. At least they run on time!
	Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman's subsidiary points. There is no question of anyone building airports on a predict-and-provide basis. As I have often said, the private sector will build and pay for any new airport capacity. It will not build an airport on spec; people do not do that.
	Our objective must be to provide frameworks in which the commercial sector—the airlines as well as the people who run the airports—and people who live near airports can plan.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned economic benefits. The aviation industry, not only airports, greatly benefits this county, indirectly as well as directly. Heathrow must employ more than 100,000 people. The decision that we make, especially on London airports, is therefore immensely important not only to the people involved but to the country.

Chris Mullin: During my 18 undistinguished months as aviation Minister, I learned two lessons about the aviation industry. First, its demands are insatiable; secondly, successive Governments have always given way to them. May I put it to my right hon. Friend that the time has come to make a stand? Instead of building more runways, airports and terminals, he should consider a little demand management. Air travel is not a basic human right and it should be matched by environmental considerations.

Alistair Darling: I remember that my hon. Friend spent 18 months as aviation Minister. Perhaps I take a slightly different view from him. Half the country flew at least once last year. My hon. Friend may believe that that is wrong. By demand management, he means increasing the price of air travel. That will prevent some people from travelling. It is problematic for hon. Members to say that to our fellow countrymen.
	I agree, and the consultation documents make it clear, that the aviation industry should pay the price of its environmental impact. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made an announcement about that in the pre-Budget report. This is not, as my hon. Friend puts it, a question of giving in to the industry. We have to work out what we think the likely demand will be—of course it is critically important that we take into account the environmental impact—and to make sensible plans for that demand. As I said a moment ago, this industry is of immense importance to the country, and it is important that we get this right. I am in no doubt about this. I look at the issue from the point of view of the country, rather than the industry, because that is what the Government do. I do not, however, have the slight reluctance—I will not say antipathy—that my hon. Friend has in accepting that the industry might have something to contribute.

Francis Maude: Leaving aside the irony of a court of law reproving the Government for their reluctance to overturn a binding legal agreement between two public authorities—and leaving aside the merits of the case, which I believe are substantial—does the Secretary of State accept that his original decision to exclude Gatwick was correct, if only on the basis of that legal agreement? Does he also agree that the case for a new airport for the south-east, located on the coast—whatever configuration or option is chosen—remains very powerful, in that the flight paths of the growing aviation industry could be located over water rather than over people's houses? Given that a number of alternative proposals to the one in his original options paper for Cliffe have been put forward, will he use the enforced opportunity of an extended consultation period to ensure that those three or four different options for a new airport are fully exposed and consulted on?

Alistair Darling: Yes, the whole point of the consultation is to receive recommendations and representations, and if we receive serious, worked up proposals, of course we will look at them. That is the whole point. On the right hon. Gentleman's first point—I remember that he said something similar in July—it is an irony, but it is one of those things that we have to live with.

Laura Moffatt: I firmly believe that my right hon. Friend has made the right decision not to appeal the judicial review, because to have done so would have left us with more discontent and a greater sense that there was no future for our airports in the south-east. Gatwick wants to be part of the future, and I therefore firmly believe that the right decision has been made. Will my right hon. Friend assure me and my constituents in Crawley that the process of deciding the future of airports in the south-east will be dealt with in Parliament? My constituents want to know where we are going and what the future will hold, and that we have a proper plan in place.

Alistair Darling: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. It is very important that we publish a White Paper next year, because to let the matter drag on would do no one any good. On my hon. Friend's point about an appeal, I do not think that any good would come of the Government's engaging in lengthy litigation that would take months and months. Whatever else the Government do, I do not think that it is our job to provide a living for more and more lawyers when we could be getting on with the job. I speak as a former lawyer, and I am not too bitter, although when I see what some of my learned friends are getting up to these days, I wonder whether I made the right decision all those years ago. It would be quite wrong to prolong this process, and I want to bring it to a conclusion as quickly as possible.

Brian Mawhinney: To please the Secretary of State, I shall tell him that I was responsible for the last review of airport policy in the south-east, so I know how difficult the issues he faces are, and I commend his statement today. In that review, we were careful to leave open the possibility of an additional close parallel runway at Gatwick, not least because it would be less disruptive than building a new runway at one of the other airports, or, indeed, at Gatwick. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how much importance he attached to that possibility when he made his decision to exclude Gatwick from the consultation?

Alistair Darling: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his initial remarks. I know that he was involved in these considerations in 1995, and I always find it instructive to look back—so far as we are able, within the normal constraints—to see what happened to Ministers in earlier years. It is often very clear why nothing ever came of various proposals, and that does not apply only to transport.
	In relation to Gatwick, as I told the House a few moments ago, because the Government decided as a first step, for the reasons that I set out, that it would not be right to overturn the 1979 agreement, it followed that we could not ask what were the best options for it. Clearly, however, they were considered earlier as part of the studies carried out before the consultation. Now that Gatwick has to be considered as a result of the court ruling, we need to publish a further paper that will give options, no doubt including the question of the close runway referred to by the right hon. Gentleman.

Fiona Mactaggart: May I commend the Secretary of State on his urgency? It is clear to me that, whether or not the court's decision is right, it can only be right for our economy and our environment to reach a conclusion on this important matter as swiftly as possible, because the longer we delay, the more damage will be done on both issues. In the consultation, will he ensure that people have an opportunity to raise the question whether we need only one hub airport for London or whether a different approach might be possible?

Alistair Darling: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend in relation to urgency and whether there ought to be one hub airport or more. That is one issue that is canvassed in chapter 4 of the south-east study. There have been almost 50,000 respondents so far, some of whom have addressed those points. She is absolutely right that they are matters that we need to consider and we will consider them.

David Wilshire: Whatever the rights and wrongs of the consultation process, does the Secretary of State agree that the overarching priority must be an early decision and early action, which is why I welcome his decision not to drag matters out by appealing? Does he accept that the UK, the south-east region and Heathrow are already suffering from delay and uncertainty? Will he make it his new year's resolution to summon the courage to complete the consultation process and start building runways as soon as possible?

Ann Coffey: Where?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman is right about the fact that the south-east is already congested. The analysis of the problem is relatively easy; the solution as to where is rather more problematic.

John McDonnell: Leonard Cohen has a lot to answer for:
	XLike a bird on the wire,
	Like a drunk in a midnight choir
	I have tried"
	always to be true. If we are to be true in the next stage of the consultation process, will my right hon. Friend consider re-issuing the documents so that they are accurate, including, in particular, information on compensation; information on public meetings, which should be advertised locally in my area, not in the Evening Standard only; BAA's commitment to a sixth terminal linked to the third runway; and BA's proposal to shift the runway to the east, which would demolish another part of my constituency? Also, will he meet community representatives, as he has met industry representatives over the past few months? Even if the decision were not one that my constituents could be happy with, at least they would be able to accept the process as relatively fair.

Alistair Darling: I am glad that we have found something in common. Clearly, we both listen to Leonard Cohen.
	On Heathrow, as I have said to my hon. Friend and, indeed, to others, if there are problems with the consultation exercise relating to either documents or procedure, he should let me or one of my fellow Ministers know and we will try to put them right. The matter is important and it is important that we get it right. We shall endeavour to do so.

Mark Prisk: For my constituents in Bishop's Stortford, east Hertfordshire and the surrounding communities, the 16-week consultation process was rushed and ill prepared from the beginning. Now it has turned from tragedy to farce. Having accepted that the High Court judgment says that the Secretary of State's original decision was irrational and unjust, does the right hon. Gentleman now accept his responsibility for any resulting blight?

Alistair Darling: The court reached its decision on the narrow question of Gatwick. The judge held that people ought to be able to have their say; he was not asked to address the entire consultation.
	It is regrettable that the delay and uncertainty will continue for longer than any of us wanted, but we are where we are. We have the court judgment and I sense that the majority of Members want to bring matters to a conclusion, certainly next year. That is precisely what I want to do.

Howard Stoate: May I tell my right hon. Friend that an early decision is essential? We do not want a repeat of the fiasco surrounding the uncertainty about the channel tunnel rail link's final route, which caused years of blight and other problems in my constituency. May I also tell my right hon. Friend that I deeply regret the action taken by Kent county council, which will cause blight, delay, uncertainty and misery for my constituents? Will he do all that he can to shorten the process? The four-month period he has recommended is too long: it will allow yet more months, possibly even years, of blight and uncertainty.

Alistair Darling: I understand the position of my hon. Friend and other north Kent Members who have made representations about the delay. When Kent county council took that action, it asked the judge to set aside what we were doing. The delay is a direct consequence of that, and we will just have to live with it. As I have said, this means that the White Paper will not be published until later next year, but I cannot try to short-circuit the process, not least because I do not particularly want to provide a fertile hunting ground for yet more lawyers who may seek to challenge the decision. The thing must be done properly, and I think that it can be done properly with a four-month consultation period. We must then try to reach a conclusion, because there will be an awful lot more debate to come.

John Taylor: It is difficult to imagine a greater cock-up—the most magisterial Government consultation, made more pompous by statistical assertions, extrapolations, tendentious questionnaires and bogus economics, all now in ruins. What comfort has the Secretary of State for those of my constituents who would have been well content with natural growth at Birmingham airport within its existing perimeter?

Alistair Darling: When I spoke to the hon. Gentleman the other day, he was rather more reasonable. If he still wants to come and see me to discuss these matters, he would be well advised to go on being reasonable. However, I understand that he has a point to make, and I understand why he is doing so. Many people have made the same point about Birmingham, not least when I was in Birmingham recently. I would be happy to discuss it with the hon. Gentleman—and with one of his hon. Friends, who I think wants to come along with him.

James Plaskitt: I realise that my right hon. Friend has been put in a difficult position by the court decision, but does he appreciate the implications for the west midlands of what he has said about extending the consultation period? The siting of a new international airport near Rugby is being considered. The area has been seriously blighted by that proposal, and people were looking forward to an early resolution of the matter; but now the consultation period has been extended by a further four months. Can my right hon. Friend say anything of an interim nature about the west midlands, or must everything be delayed for four months?

Alistair Darling: As my hon. Friend knows, I wanted to bring the matter to a conclusion early next year. I expected to do so well before the summer, precisely to deal with the concerns felt by him and by other Members, not just in the west midlands but elsewhere. Unfortunately, because of Kent county council's action and various issues raised by it, I must proceed in a manner that is entirely proper and does justice to all the consultation. That means that the White Paper cannot now be published until the end of the year, which is regrettable, but people are perfectly entitled to go to court if they think it right. The judge took a different view from the Government. I have explained a number of times why I think it better not to prolong matters by spending months in the appeal courts—I think we should now get on with it—but I entirely understand what my hon. Friend has said, not just today but on previous occasions.

Michael Trend: I welcome what the Secretary of State has said, but given this opportune hiatus he will clearly have to republish a number of documents. Could the Government spell out more clearly their position on such questions as mitigation and guarantees, especially in the context of noise of pollution and air quality? As the hon. Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) implied, during the consultation process hitherto people have raised such matters repeatedly with us, as their representatives.

Alistair Darling: As I said, my intention is to publish a further consultation paper that flows from the Gatwick decision. However, the existing consultation continues, and it is important to make it clear to people that they need not resubmit everything that they have submitted already. As I have pointed out, some 50,000 representations have already been received.
	I shall reflect on mitigation and the various environmental concerns that the hon. Gentleman and others have raised, but I want to avoid prolonging matters for month after month, because that is in nobody's interests. For a start, that is not fair on those who live near airports; nor, indeed, is it good for anybody. I want to proceed as efficiently as I can, consistent with my obligations to consult and to behave in a way that is beyond criticism.

Glenda Jackson: I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement, and for the speed with which he has entered into the undoubtedly sensitive area of tackling this country's long-term aviation needs. That is in marked contrast to the Conservatives, who simply ran away from this subject during 18 years in government. Could he ensure that public consultation is advertised much more widely than in just those areas closest to Heathrow airport? My constituents suffer—as do many people in London and the south-east—from overflights, and it would help if public meetings were advertised much more widely across London. On the environmental concerns, I hope that my right hon. Friend will confirm that this Government are arguing in the international community for a date by which a tax will be placed on aviation fuel.

Alistair Darling: On the latter point, as the consultation documents make clear, we believe that this issue ought to be resolved. My hon. Friend is doubtless aware from her previous experience that achieving international agreement on these matters is difficult, because many countries start from a completely different point of view.
	As for the next few months, I should again make it clear that it is open to anyone throughout the length and breadth of the country to make representations. There is no restriction on that—indeed, I understand that some quarter of a million letters and pieces of information have been sent out to people across the country. In publishing the further document that will flow from the Gatwick decision, I want to ensure that people are aware of that point, but it is not necessary to retramp over every inch of the ground that we have covered; we simply need to ensure that we pick up what is necessary following the Gatwick decision, while emphasising that it is open to anyone, anywhere to make representations. Of course, whatever we decide on the London airports has implications not just for London and the south-east, but for the rest of the country.

John Barrett: Twice the Secretary of State has said that he regrets the extension of the period of uncertainty as to the future of several of the communities affected by this lengthening process. What message will he give to those communities affected by the blight of this uncertain period, who live under flight paths and very close to airports? I am thinking of villages such as Kirkliston and Newbridge, in my constituency, which the Secretary of State knows well.

Alistair Darling: I do indeed know them well. Because Kent county council challenged the Government and succeeded—at least to the material extent of getting Gatwick back into the process—we have inevitably had to consult on these issues. There is no getting away from that. It is of course regrettable that the period of consultation has extended as a result. It would have been nice to be able to say, XLet's treat Gatwick separately," but we cannot because, as one of the major London airports, it clearly has an impact on the rest of the UK—not least on Edinburgh, which the hon. Gentleman has in mind. There are many Edinburgh flights to Gatwick, as well as to London Heathrow, and I am afraid that we must consider that. I hope that we can bring these matters to a conclusion as quickly as possible next year, but I am certain that we are now talking about the autumn, because we cannot possibly do justice to a consultation and get something out before the summer recess.

Paul Clark: May I commend the Secretary of State on his clear response to the situation within 48 hours of the judgment—an action that will be warmly welcomed by the people of north Kent? Yesterday's written statement, which pointed out that he will not seek to appeal, was also warmly welcomed by the hundreds of people who lobbied Parliament against the Cliffe proposal.
	The Secretary of State said that a White Paper should be published next year. I urge him to stick to that, for all the reasons of continuing blight and anguish that have been given. In light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson), is he aware that the people of Essex were very concerned yesterday that they had had no exhibition or involvement, even though some of them, for example at Canvey Island, are very close to the Cliffe site?

Alistair Darling: There is no need for people to wait for an exhibition or an invitation to respond. There is no reason why anyone with a view on Cliffe or Stansted, whether they are affected or not, should not make representations. About 50,000 representations have been received on the White Paper, as I have now said two or three times. My hon. Friend knows that my original intention was to publish the White Paper early next year, and I hoped to resolve the matter in that way once and for all, but unfortunately the decision taken by the county council resulted in the very delay that, I suspect, many people in Kent did not want.

Andrew Robathan: What scale of fees is NOP charging for its involvement in the questionnaires, and will the Secretary of State refuse to pay those fees? Is he aware of the serious flaws in the questionnaires from the midlands and, I understand, from Wales? They talk about the number of flights currently going from the midlands to the south-east, but there are no flights scheduled from the midlands—or, I understand, from Wales—to the south-east. As a lawyer, does he consider that there might be grounds for judicial review or challenge if any decision is based on such a flawed questionnaire?

Alistair Darling: I was always taught never to give free legal advice, and I intend to stick to that. One can get struck off for it.
	The questionnaires were issued because it was put to us that there were some people who, for whatever reason, did not want to write but wanted some way of expressing a view. Questionnaires can never be conclusive in themselves. The Government will look at them, because they are one way of gauging opinion, but we will also look at all the letters and representations, including those from Members of Parliament, before reaching a view. When we publish the White Paper there will certainly be an opportunity to debate it in the House. I expect that hon. Members will have many views—not, I suspect, along party lines—and those will help to inform our decision. Of course, there are other opportunities to raise these matters in the House well in advance of the White Paper.

Chris Pond: My right hon. Friend will know that this is the worst possible news for my constituents, and especially for the 3,000 who signed the Kent Messenger petition that I delivered to him yesterday. They will welcome his sense of urgency, but he will be aware that, in addition to the anxiety that this is causing, it is holding back many of the infrastructure developments and other plans in the Thames gateway, and in particular the north Kent end. Will he give whatever reassurance he can to both the public and the private partners in the Thames gateway developments that he will reach a decision and publish the White Paper as early as possible, as the uncertainty is really starting to cost us dear?

Alistair Darling: We will do whatever we can to resolve the uncertainty. It must have been within the contemplation of Kent county council that if it went to court it might win, and that if it won there would be consequences. It had a perfect right to do that, but we have to accept the fact that the court reached a particular view and get on with it as quickly as possible. Of course, if there are specific problems in north Kent, I—or my colleagues, who may be more directly involved in some of the matters that my hon. Friend has in mind—will certainly consider them.

John Randall: The Secretary of State said that people can respond without having a public exhibition, but the majority want one, to try and find out the facts. I wrote to his Department some considerable time ago—I am still awaiting a reply, and perhaps my asking this question will help—about the perception that the process for Heathrow could have been done much better and more fairly. In the interests of fair play, therefore, would it be possible for the right hon. Gentleman to give a commitment to hold another exhibition for Heathrow? I know that the London borough of Hillingdon would be able and happy to facilitate that.

Alistair Darling: I shall reflect on that. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that he wrote and asked for a meeting. I asked my officials to provide me with a note of which colleagues had asked for a meeting with all Ministers in the Department, not just with me. The hon. Gentleman's name did not appear in that note, but I shall check again and find out what the position is.

Derek Conway: The Secretary of State has adopted a very reasonable tone to the House, which is to be welcomed. Residents of Bexley and north Kent hope that he will be as strong an environmentalist as he is polite to the House. Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the consultation documents will be reissued in the south-east of England only, or is he considering the whole package? If he is considering only the south-east of England, can something be done about the cost? The documents are very expensive, especially for residents' groups. Would the CD option be a possibility? Could some money be saved to allow more people to understand the impact of the vector flight paths?

Alistair Darling: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present earlier when I was asked a similar question. I made it clear then that the consultation will cover the whole country and not just the south-east. That is because the London airports are such an integral part of UK air transport as a whole. I am not planning to re-issue all the documents that have been issued already, but I am planning to issue a further document on the consequences of the Gatwick decision. There will, of course, be effects outside Gatwick, but the document is primarily on that decision. The new consultation period will run for four months from the publication of that document, and will allow people to make representations in respect of the entire country.

George Osborne: I welcome the decision to extend the consultation across the whole country. Developments at Manchester airport such as a third runway or a fourth terminal would further blight the lives of people whom I represent. Picking up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Mr. Trend), may I urge the right hon. Gentleman to make a virtue of necessity and ensure that, when he makes a decision about where airport expansion will take place, that decision will be accompanied by a series of measures to protect people from excessive aircraft noise, pollution and the misery of night flights?

Alistair Darling: As I said earlier, the environmental impact of extending airport capacity will be taken into account. The consultation documents make that clear.

Jonathan Djanogly: I welcome the extended consultation period, but the Secretary of State should understand that the vast majority of my constituents consider the consultation over the Alconbury proposal to have been inaccurate and unfair. The single public meeting that was held was moved from Peterborough to Huntingdon at only a few days' notice. Those who were able to attend found that the information was inaccurate, not least in that no night noise statistics were provided in relation to an airport that will have flights 24 hours a day. Will he undertake to hold a further public consultation meeting, at which more accurate information will be provided?

Alistair Darling: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman writes to me setting out his concerns on that matter. I shall then reflect on how best to deal with them.

Mark Francois: May I remind the Secretary of State that the court case in question was supported by Essex county council on behalf of residents in the south of the county who would be adversely affected by the proposals on Cliffe, and on behalf of residents in the north of the county who would be adversely affected by the Stansted proposals? My special plea, on behalf of my constituents in Rayleigh and of people in surrounding constituencies, is that those in the south of Essex are allowed to play a fuller part in any expanded consultation period. In that way, they would be able to put across their worries about Cliffe. As has been noted already, there is considerable feeling in the south of Essex that, so far, people there have not been consulted properly on the implications of the proposals that may affect them.

Alistair Darling: As I have said several times this afternoon, there is nothing to prevent anyone living in any part of the country from making representations about any airport, whether it is nearby or distant. The Government want to encourage that. After all, the decision in the White Paper will have profound implications for air transport over the next 30 years. That is why it is important that we hear from people as much as possible. We have to reconcile people's concerns about airport development with the undeniable fact that more and more people are flying. Moreover, much of this country's prosperity depends on our ability to move people and goods about, nationally and internationally. There are decisions that we have to face up to, and we must take them next year. However, I appreciate that hon. Members want constituents to be well informed. If the hon. Gentleman has specific concerns, I suggest that he writes to me or to one of my ministerial colleagues. We will see what we can do to ensure that he has the information that he and his constituents need.

British Energy

Patricia Hewitt: With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on British Energy.
	British Energy operates eight nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom, supplies over a fifth of our electricity and employs 5,200 workers in Britain. In May this year the company announced in its preliminary results a pre-tax, pre-exceptionals, profit of £42 million in its British and north American operations, but an overall loss to its UK operations of £41 million. None the less, the company chose to maintain its dividend, paying out £48 million to shareholders.
	During the summer, British Energy decided to attempt a bond issue in the United States, which was unsuccessful. On 13 August, one of the reactors at the company's Torness station was taken out of service due to unforeseen problems, reducing the company's income by £56 million. The next day company executives told investors that there were no immediate cash flow problems.
	Throughout the summer, British Energy engaged in discussions with British Nuclear Fuels Limited to renegotiate the terms of its contracts. These were entirely commercial discussions between the two companies. At the beginning of September, British Energy realised that its financial problems were far greater than it had thought and that any conceivable deal with BNFL would not be enough to meet its requirements. On 4 September the company wrote to inform me of a significant worsening in the company's financial position and about liquidity problems. It said that the board would have to decide, on legal advice, whether it could continue to meet its liabilities and therefore trade legally, and it asked for Government help.
	On the next day, I announced that the Government were entering into discussions with the company. On 9 September I announced a loan facility of £410 million to support its trading operations both in the UK and north America. On 26 September, after a further request from the company, the Government decided to extend the loan facility until 29 November and increase it to £650 million. That was designed to give the company sufficient time to clarify its full financial position and to come to a clear view on its future options.
	Both the initial loan and its extension were notified to the European Commission under state aid rules, and I can tell the House that the Commission announced yesterday that it has approved the loan. I offered that loan because it was the best way of securing the safety of the nuclear power stations and the security of electricity supply to the grid and consumers. Those remain my overriding objectives.
	British Energy has submitted a plan to the Government for the solvent restructuring of the company. We and our financial advisers have assessed its implications, and I can announce to the House that the Government have agreed to play their part in allowing the company to attempt solvent restructuring.
	Both the company and my Department have made statements to the stock exchange today; I have placed copies of both in the Library of the House and in the Vote Office.
	The company has announced that it will continue to make payments to a fund that is used to pay for the costs of decommissioning its power stations, give the fund £275million of bonds in the company and surrender to the fund 65 per cent. of its available cash each year.
	The Government will underwrite those arrangements to ensure safety and environmental protection. In addition, we have recognised that if this restructuring is to work, we must contribute significantly to the company's £2.1 billion of historic nuclear fuel liabilities that are managed by BNFL and extend to 2086. The cost to the Government will average £150 million to £200 million a year for the next 10 years and will fall thereafter.
	If the company does very well, surpluses from British Energy's contribution to the decommissioning funds will help meet those costs. However, I also intend to look at how the contracts are managed as part of the creation of the liabilities management authority. In addition, BNFL is today announcing that it will agree new contracts with British Energy for fuel supply and for spent fuel services in respect of future nuclear electricity generation.
	If the company's proposed restructuring is to succeed, first the existing creditors will have to accept both a temporary freeze on payments and subsequently a significant write-down in the value of what they are owed. Secondly, the company will have to complete the sale of all its north American operations. Thirdly, it will have to implement the new trading strategy that it announced today. Agreement to all that must be achieved by the middle of February.
	The Government are prepared to continue to fund BE's operations while the restructuring plan is agreed and implemented. The existing credit facility will be extended to 9 March, with its size remaining unchanged at £650 million. Of that existing facility, £382 million had been drawn down by yesterday. Under the proposal, the money will be progressively repaid as the company's financial situation improves. In the event of administration, we have taken security to protect the interests of the taxpayer and rank above other creditors.
	I also intend shortly to bring forward legislation to enable me to carry forward the Government's part of the proposed restructuring or, if it fails, to acquire the companies or their assets. This proposal for solvent restructuring will, of course, need state aid approval by the European Commission. Once the company has reached agreement with its financial creditors, we will notify the plan to the Commission.
	In September, I said that, if possible, we would look to a solvent restructuring. However, we did not rule out the possibility that the company might decide to go into administration. We have therefore prepared detailed contingency plans for administration, in discussion with all the key responsible regulatory bodies, to ensure that whatever happens, nuclear safety and security of supply will be maintained.
	I stress that if British Energy were to go into administration, all its nuclear liabilities would fall to the Government. We cannot walk away from them; no responsible Government could. That is why the situation with British Energy is different from that of any other generator.
	I take this opportunity to thank the staff at British Energy. Their skill and dedication is essential in ensuring nuclear safety. This has been an unsettling time for them, but whatever happens, nuclear power stations will continue to generate electricity and will continue to employ staff. Pension entitlements will be met. Trade suppliers will be paid. Customers' lights will stay on.
	I understand that today's news will give little comfort to British Energy's financial stakeholders but they, too, must take their share of the pain if the company is to survive. The stakeholders now need to decide whether they are willing to support solvent restructuring; if they are not, the Government are fully prepared if British Energy decides that administration is the only option.
	Today, the company announced that Robin Jeffrey is stepping down and that Adrian Montague will succeed him as chairman. Mr. Montague is an experienced executive who brings key business experience, from both the public and private sectors. It is clear that there have been management failings and it is right for the company to seek to strengthen its management team at this critical time.
	I have set out the limits of what the Government are willing to do to support solvent restructuring. It is now up to the company, its new management and its financial stakeholders to determine the future of British Energy.

Tim Yeo: I welcome the statement that the Secretary of State has made, a copy of which I received about half an hour ago, some time after Greenpeace helpfully e-mailed my office with details of the press release issued by British Energy in connection with the statement.
	The statement at last gives Parliament a chance to question the Secretary of State about her decision, taken almost three months ago, to commit £650 million of taxpayer's money to bailing out British Energy. The statement, which was made at the last possible parliamentary moment, raises a number of questions that I shall come to later. Unfortunately, it does not address the central absurdity of the Government's policy: the imposition of the climate change levy on British Energy.
	The Government claim that the climate change levy forms part of their strategy to meet our climate change commitments. As nuclear power is the main energy source that does not produce carbon dioxide emissions, the Government's policy is an absurd contradiction.
	The fact is that British Energy will not enjoy fair trading conditions until the burden of the climate change levy is removed. An essential part of the solution to this crisis is for the Government to abolish the climate change levy—an arbitrary tax that does nothing to address climate change—and replace it with a single economic instrument, such as an emissions trading system or a carbon tax.
	Is the Secretary of State aware that that is not only our policy, but that of the Royal Society, whose policy document was published a couple of weeks ago? Will she explain why the Government reject the arguments authoritatively put by the Royal Society? Does she recognise that that approach would improve the position of both nuclear and renewables compared with fossil fuels and that it would also make it possible to guarantee that targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions would be met? Alas, I fear that, even if she accepts those arguments, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, downgraded though he is, still remains higher in the pecking order.
	I welcome the news that British Energy has been allowed to negotiate new terms with BNFL. Perhaps the Secretary of State will explain why that has taken so long. Has it not been clear for months, long before the bail-out was announced in early September, that that needed to happen? Will she confirm whether British Energy reached a commercial agreement with BNFL some time ago on terms that had her blessing only to have the deal blocked by the Treasury? Can she now reveal how much British Energy will save as a result of the new contract terms with BNFL?
	Does the Secretary of State realise that the Government's muddled approach to nuclear power is damaging confidence in the industry? On 17 November, the Minister for Energy and Construction told The Sunday Times:
	XWe need that supply so, come what may, nuclear generation will continue."
	Just eight days later, the Secretary of State for Wales—a former Energy Minister—told The Western Mail that he wanted to shut down nuclear power stations. With such contradictions inside the Government, it is no wonder that the Secretary of State has difficulty in resolving what the Government's policy should be, but does she understand that, with one member of the Cabinet attacking nuclear power, the attempt at solvent restructuring that she has just outlined will be much harder to achieve? Will she therefore repudiate the remarks of the Secretary of State for Wales?
	What additional cost to the taxpayer will arise if solvent restructuring cannot be achieved and British Energy is forced into administration? Perhaps the Secretary of State can explain that in terms of the immediate cash outgoings in the next year and the longer-term liabilities. Can she say whether the costs that she now acknowledges will arise to the Government were included in the higher Government borrowing figures announced yesterday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
	Will the Secretary of State explain what legislation is needed to take forward the Government's part of the proposed restructuring? Does her statement mean that the Government are now considering taking British Energy back into public ownership? If so, will she explain how that will reduce British Energy's costs by a single penny or help it to become more viable in the future?
	Delaying decisions about measures such as replacing the climate change levy, which would help to secure British Energy's future, will not make solvent restructuring easier to achieve. The fact that the liabilities management authority Bill is still only a draft suggests that the Government are having difficulty in acting in a timely manner on that issue as well.
	The problems of British Energy were caused by a fall in the price that generators receive—a fall that has been sharpened by the new electricity trading arrangements—and British Energy is not the only generator in financial trouble. Is the Secretary of State satisfied that the operation of NETA is consistent with the overriding importance of security of supply? Does she consider that the regulator's remit adequately reflects the priority that must be given to maintaining the security of supply, especially when energy markets are about to experience their biggest change for a generation? Does she believe that Britain's energy needs and its climate change obligations can be met in the long term without any contribution from nuclear power?
	The Secretary of State has tried to reassure us that throwing a little more taxpayers' money and allowing the company a bit more time will somehow resolve the Government's dilemma over nuclear power. The truth is that the Government's actions and omissions created problems for British Energy that would not otherwise have arisen. The bill for those actions and omissions will fall significantly on the taxpayer, regardless of whether solvent restructuring succeeds. The statement confirms that the Government's handling of this crisis has been bad for the taxpayer, and perpetuates uncertainty about the Government's energy policy.

Patricia Hewitt: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for the late arrival of the statement, although I am assured that it was faxed to his office at 10 minutes to 1. I would always seek to ensure that he receives copies of my statements in accordance with the normal parliamentary courtesies.
	I shall now turn to the substance of the hon. Gentleman's response. In relation to the climate change levy, we made our policy absolutely clear in April 2001, when we introduced it. It is not designed to be a carbon tax but to give clear incentives to industry and commercial users to improve their energy efficiency. We will, of course, consider the whole question of whether further changes are needed to the entire policy environment, including the climate change levy, in the White Paper that we will publish in the new year. As I have said, we will not change policy, for instance, in relation to the climate change levy, simply for the sake of one company that has got itself into difficulties, however serious those difficulties are.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the negotiations that have been taking place with BNFL. Let me stress again that they are entirely a commercial matter for the two companies. Although the Government own BNFL, we are not managers of the company, we do not interfere in its day-to-day operations, and we leave the management to get on with those commercial negotiations. It is untrue to suggest, as he did, that there was a deal earlier in the summer, or that it was blocked by any part of Government. The final impact of that deal will depend on future wholesale electricity prices, since the new commercial contracts will be pegged to those market prices.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about the costs of restructuring, and particularly about whether they would vary were the company to go into administration. Let me make it clear that there is no real difference in the cost to the taxpayer between the solvent restructuring that we are giving the company a chance to put into place and falling into administration, should that happen. I draw his attention to what the Chancellor said yesterday in the pre-Budget report:
	XThe Government expects the loan facility to be managed within the planned totals for Departmental Expenditure Limits and the financial implications of any restructuring to be consistent with the forecast of the public finances and performance against the fiscal rules published in this Pre-Budget Report."
	That was the position yesterday, and it remains the position today; it is not affected by this statement.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about legislation. I hope that we will introduce the legislation to which I referred in my statement before Christmas. As I indicated, that will allow us to fulfil our part of the restructuring, either in the event of a solvent restructuring or, if administration proves to be the company's decision, in the event of administration.
	In relation to the impact on the company of NETA, let me make it clear that even before the new electricity trading arrangements were introduced, prices were falling due to liberalisation and changes in the marketplace. We introduced the new trading arrangements after extensive consultation with the entire industry, including British Energy, to remove the distortions inherent in the old pool system of fixing prices, and to put in place a much more transparent system of arriving at prices than ever existed under the pool. The hon. Gentleman needs to remember that the overcapacity in the electricity market, which is now unwinding itself, and which has led to the reduction of prices following changes to the market environment, was the direct result of the pool arrangements and artificially high prices that led to the unnecessary investment that existed under his Government. He really does need to look at the history.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to environmental targets, the importance of climate change and the role of nuclear power. All those issues are considered in the White Paper that will be published in the new year. We are absolutely committed to playing our part in dealing with the enormous problem of climate change. We will have much more to say about the appropriate targets on reductions, especially in carbon emissions, following Kyoto. British Energy's nuclear generators are responsible for 20 per cent. of total electricity generation and it plays a part in contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Vincent Cable: One of the few welcome aspects of this worrying statement is the tough conditions that the European Commission attaches to the loan. Perhaps we should be grateful that it is more concerned than Ministers are about the prudential use of British taxpayer's money.
	How much is involved? The Government cite the figure of £650 million, but I received a fax yesterday from the Commission that said that it had approved a loan of £900 million, with additional contingencies of £275 million. Which figure is right? The Government seem to have contingent liabilities for the company greater than those provided for the Iraq war. If the figures double every three weeks, how can we have confidence in the numbers that the Government use?
	The nuclear safety issue is paramount. Am I correct in understanding that there is no regulatory provision for the protection of nuclear safety if British Energy becomes insolvent? If that is the case, it reflects badly on the people who privatised it, but why did the Government take five years to notice the problem and prepare for it?
	Why is there a fundamental problem with security of supply? National Grid states that British Energy provides 13 per cent. of capacity—not 20 per cent. as the right hon. Lady said—and there is 25 per cent. of spare capacity to meet demand. The industry's regulator, Mr. McCarthy, who presumably knows something about the industry that he regulates, says that the problems of British Energy pose no threat to security of supply, either in whole or in the event of some of its older reactors ceasing production. If the Government are at such odds with their regulator, why is he still in his job?
	On competition, the Government have arranged a rescue operation for a failed and badly managed company and its shareholders. What answer does the Minister give to the workers and shareholders of other companies in the energy industry, such as renewable power generators and AES Drax, in which people are losing their livelihood and money as a result of competition with the enterprise that the Government are rescuing?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman refers to the tough conditions supposedly imposed by the European Commission. He takes that phrase from the title of its press release issued yesterday. Had he read on, he would have found that we imposed the Xtough conditions" as a condition of making the loan in the first place. In other words, the loan facility that we made available was not handed over to the company. It was put into a separate account and every bill or guarantee met from the facility is first checked and cleared by our accountancy advisers. The European Commission welcomed the fact that we had put in place such tough controls.
	So far, thanks to the extremely tough and prudent management of the facility that we put in place, only about 60 per cent. of the total facility has been used, so we do not propose to increase it. However, we have discussed with the European Commission the maximum amount that may be required for the six-month period for which rescue aid has been approved. That is why the Commission has approved a figure higher than the £650 million that we already have in place; in other words, the Commission's approval relates to the maximum that may be required but our objective is to pay only the minimum. We will continue to do everything necessary to achieve that through the tough management of the account.
	The hon. Gentleman asked whether the safety and regulatory conditions would apply if the company decided to put itself into administration. We have spent a large part of recent weeks in discussions with the various regulators to ensure that even if the company decides that it needs to go into administration, health and safety, including nuclear safety, will be properly secured. One of the main reasons why we were not prepared, many weeks ago, to risk letting the company fall into unplanned administration is that, at that time, the question of health and safety, among others, was not clear.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about security of supply. The difference between the figures of 13 per cent. and 20 per cent. is simply a matter of the base that one uses—whether one measures production against capacity or against total generation. As a result of the significant mothballing of plant that has taken place over the past year, particularly in recent months, the capacity margin, although certainly adequate to ensure security of supply throughout the winter, is significantly lower than it has been.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We have an important Bill to discuss this afternoon and many hon. Members want to take part in that debate. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said that she will shortly introduce legislation, so we will have an early opportunity to return to this subject. I do not intend, therefore, to run this on much beyond 2.40 pm. I hope that I may have the co-operation of the House in that respect, and I ask for short questions and short answers.

Geoffrey Robinson: I congratulate the Secretary of State on her robust and intelligently constructed position, which puts the onus for the financial recovery and solvency of British Energy firmly on the company itself. She has created a position in which, over the next few months, we can debate the implications of NETA and its current operation—it is not an entirely satisfactory replacement for the pool, as she no doubt realises—and other aspects of energy policy, notably the security and diversity of supply that we seek. It is entirely to her credit that she has created that opportunity for us, and I hope that all parties in the House will engage constructively in a debate that is in the national interest.

Patricia Hewitt: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. On NETA, perhaps it will help if I stress that we are already supporting changes to its operation, in particular to assist smaller generators and to improve the way in which the balancing mechanism works. He is right to say that we will need to return to that and many other issues in the White Paper.

Michael Jack: The manufacturers of British Energy's fuels, namely, the workers in my constituency at Salwick, will be grateful to the Secretary of State for the help that she has given the company. However, will she confirm that the revised arrangements with BNFL will not harm that company's profitability? Will she also explain to the House how the revised arrangements will affect the cost of generation of each kilowatt-hour of nuclear energy from British Energy? Will the company thereafter trade profitably within the constraints of NETA?

Patricia Hewitt: The new contracts that British Energy is putting in place with BNFL are part of a strategy to reduce its costs and establish new longer-term contracts with the energy suppliers to protect itself against possible further downward movements in prices. As for BNFL's profitability, I elaborated on that matter last year in a statement on the creation of the liabilities management authority.

Anne Picking: I, too, welcome the Secretary of State's statement. Torness is in my constituency and her remarks about the staff, their commitment, hard work and loyalty were welcome. I visited the station on numerous occasions when both reactors were down and everybody, including the station master, the staff and unions, was working together. I also welcome my right hon. Friend's reaffirmation of the Government's commitment to nuclear power generation and a balanced energy policy.

Patricia Hewitt: I thank my hon. Friend. I thank her constituents and those of the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) for their continuing commitment to the safe and effective operation of nuclear power.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Before the Secretary of State introduces a policy for British Energy, she needs a policy for nuclear power. Will she comment on the fact that over the next 20 years, all Britain's nuclear power stations except one will be decommissioned? Even on the most optimistic projections for alternative energy, emissions of carbon dioxide will therefore rise, whereas the Government are committed to reductions. Why, after more than five years in office, have the Government still not got to grips with that? Why have they not practised joined-up government and brought their energy policy into line with their environmental commitments, which other sections of the Government are pleased to boast about?

Patricia Hewitt: We are taking tough action to try to improve energy efficiency and achieve an increase in renewables generating capacity of 10 per cent. by 2010. The broader issues raised by the right hon. Gentleman, including the role of nuclear power and the much broader energy framework needed to achieve continuing reductions in CO2, are matters for the White Paper.

Paddy Tipping: Will the Secretary of State confirm that none of the measures that she announced in her package prejudices security of supply, which will be considered in the White Paper? Will she go further and give a commitment to meet coalfield Members and people from coalfield communities to explain how a package of £650 million and an ongoing commitment of £150 million to £200 million a year to nuclear energy can be set against the limited aid given to coalfield communities?

Patricia Hewitt: I should be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and other colleagues from the coalfield communities. I am happy to confirm that, far from jeopardising security of supply, my statement and all my actions have been designed to secure it.
	My hon. Friend asked about support for the coal industry and coalfield communities. We have invested £150 million since 1997 in operating aid to coal companies, particularly through the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. We have invested hundreds of millions of pounds more in helping people in the coalfield communities, including the one represented by my hon. Friend, to cope with the costs of the brutal restructuring of the mining industry under a previous Conservative Government.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: Given that both Hinkley A and B are in my constituency—one owned by BNFL, the other by British Energy—is the Minister happy that money being put aside for the decommissioning of one at the moment and another in a decade's time is sufficient to sort out the entire Hinkley Point area, which, the House will appreciate, is extremely important to my constituency?

Patricia Hewitt: I completely understand the hon. Gentleman's concern. I confirm not only that we are strengthening arrangements for the nuclear decommissioning and nuclear liabilities fund in the steps that I announced today but that the Government, as always, stand as the guarantor of last resort for those nuclear liabilities.

John Grogan: My right hon. Friend referred to the aid that the Government have given the coal industry in the past. To enhance her reputation for even-handedness and fairness, will she look at the modest amount that the coal industry is making compared with the nuclear industry—nothing like £150 million to £200 million a year—and agree to lift the cap on operating aid to UK Coal?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is aware that the operating aid scheme has come to an end, although we extended it until the end of this year in order to deal with one particular problem. We succeeded earlier this year in securing, within the new European aid framework, provision for investment aid to that industry and we are now consulting on the nature of that investment aid scheme.

Simon Thomas: Does not the abject failure of British Energy spell the beginning of the end of nuclear power in this country and certainly rule out new build for the future, as announced by the Secretary of State for Wales? Will the right hon. Lady take the opportunity to put on the record what the excess generating capacity is at present and what advice she has received from the regulator? Does she accept that this is a wake-up call to her Department to get moving on energy efficiency and renewables?

Patricia Hewitt: No statement has been made about the future of nuclear electricity beyond what I have said in relation to both British Energy and BNFL. For the longer term, those are matters that we will consider in the energy White Paper, which, as I have said several times today, will be published in the new year. Of course we need to do more on energy efficiency and on renewables. We are already doing a great deal—with the hon. Gentleman's support, I hope—and we shall have more to say on the subject in the White Paper.

David Hamilton: With regard to the security of energy supply, may I draw to my right hon. Friend's attention a concern shared by many miners throughout the country that one company, UK Coal, could change the position within the United Kingdom? It is imperative that a single company should not be allowed to determine the policy of this country.

Patricia Hewitt: As I understand the position, in the eventuality that my hon. Friend describes, the coal resources would revert to the Coal Authority. The broader issue of the place of coal in securing a diverse and safe electricity supply will be considered in the White Paper.

Nick Gibb: The answer that the Secretary of State gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and to the hon. Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) is not good enough. The fundamental reason for the insolvency of British Energy is that the market price of electricity, low as it is and welcome as that is, is lower than the production cost of nuclear energy. In making a commitment of public money, the right hon. Lady must have a policy on future nuclear build. What is that policy? If there are to be no new nuclear power stations, how does that fit in with the Government's policy of reducing CO2 emissions?

Patricia Hewitt: The question of new nuclear build has nothing whatever to do with the issue of British Energy and how it will manage its responsibility for existing nuclear stations. It seems to me that the causes of British Energy's problems are many, but a company that has constantly changed its strategy, constantly sought—but failed—to secure alliances and mergers with supply companies, gone through three chief executives in about five years and lost a deputy chairman earlier this year is a company in which there have been very serious management failings. Its problems cannot be blamed on the market environment, particularly when British Energy itself, publicly and privately, welcomed the introduction of those market arrangements.

Parmjit Dhanda: I thank my right hon. Friend for her support for British Energy. She may well know that its national headquarters are based in Barnwood in my constituency. Does she have a message for the people of that ward who voted Liberal Democrat when the Liberal Democrats gained the seat in May this year, bearing in mind that the Liberal Democrats would take away the £650 million loan and jeopardise more than 1,000 jobs in that ward?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend makes an extremely interesting point. The Liberal Democrats in Gloucester told the voters of Barnwood in my hon. Friend's constituency that they oppose the policy of immediate administration that was proposed today by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats on these matters. As ever, what we are seeing from the Liberal Democrats is opportunism and confusion combined.

Andrew Lansley: Will the Secretary of State confirm—I admit that I have made my calculations while we have been sitting here—that a minimum of two thirds of the £2.1 billion discounted cost of the historic waste liabilities of British Energy will be transferred to the taxpayer? Will she clarify the relationship with the liabilities management authority, which will get from BNFL liabilities, a fund and the management of assets? What does she propose to transfer to the LMA from British Energy?

Patricia Hewitt: As I said, we anticipate that the costs of the historic nuclear liabilities for British Energy will average between £150 million and £200 million a year for the next 10 years, although if the situation improves British Energy will be expected to put more into the nuclear liabilities fund. We are making good progress on the legislation and practical arrangements necessary for the establishment of the liabilities management authority. We will consider whether it would be appropriate for British Energy's historic liabilities to be managed through the LMA; we have not yet made a decision about that.

Rob Marris: I applaud the Government's attempts to sort out this mess. I note that they are underwriting a rescue package, that the creditors are not going to be paid in full and that they will assume all nuclear liabilities if the company goes into administration.
	Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how many nuclear reactors have been built around the world in the past 25 years without direct or indirect subsidy for building, operating or decommissioning costs?

Patricia Hewitt: I do not have that figure, but I know that several countries are now commissioning new nuclear power stations in order to meet their judgment of how best to achieve their carbon reduction targets.

Mark Lazarowicz: Given the management failings that my right hon. Friend mentioned, I welcome the fact that there are to be changes at the top of the company. Will she assure us, however, that an example will not be set whereby the people responsible for presiding over massive losses in their business walk away with massive payouts as compensation for their troubles? Will she assure us that there will be no rewards for failure on this occasion?

Patricia Hewitt: I have made my views about big rewards for big corporate failures very clear on several occasions. In this situation, there are certain contractual requirements, but I would be very concerned about large remuneration payments to the former chairman. I have no doubt that he we will want to face up to his responsibility for the position in which the company finds itself. Large payments to the former chairman or anyone else involved would send a very damaging signal when all the other stakeholders face either considerable uncertainty, as in the case of employees, or are directly bearing a share in the pain. I hope that the former chairman will take the same view as me, which is that he should play his part in sharing that pain.

Glenda Jackson: Despite my right hon. Friend's previous replies, if British Energy is taken into administration that surely must have an impact on the Government's consideration of what part nuclear energy will play in providing sustainable energy in the future. Even if that does not mean excluding nuclear energy completely, a reduction in its use is something that many of my constituents would welcome.

Patricia Hewitt: The problems that we are dealing with today relate to one company. They do not arise specifically from the nature of nuclear power, whose future role will be considered in the White Paper. I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents will be as interested as everybody else to see it in the new year.

WELSH GRAND COMMITTEE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 107 and 108 (Welsh Grand Committee),
	That—
	(1) the matter of the Government's Pre-Budget Report as it relates to Wales be referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for its consideration;
	(2) the Committee shall meet at Westminster on Thursday 5th December at five minutes to Nine o'clock and at Two o'clock to consider the Government's Pre-Budget Report as it relates to Wales under Standing Order No. 107 (Welsh Grand Committee (matters relating exclusively to Wales)); and
	(3) at the meeting—
	(a) the Chairman shall interrupt proceedings at Four o'clock; and
	(b) at the conclusion of those proceedings a motion for the adjournment of the Committee may be made by a Minister of the Crown pursuant to Standing Order No. 108(5) (Welsh Grand Committee (sittings)).—[Mr. Caplin.]
	Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I should inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. There is also a 10-minute limit on Back-Benchers' speeches.

Alan Milburn: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	Today's older people are the generation who created our great public services. Labour Members believe that they, above all others, deserve to get the best from them. Indeed, the mark of a civilised society is the way in which it treats its most senior citizens. The Bill is, therefore, first and foremost about promoting the well-being and independence of older people. It is about ensuring dignity and security in old age.
	Labour Members are proud of the progress that we have already made. The average pensioner household is £840 a year better off today than in 1997. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday, there is more help to come for Britain's pensioners.
	Eye tests are again free for pensioners; that also applies to nursing care. For the first time, almost 150,000 women over 65 have been invited for breast screening. In the next four years, more than 1 million more will be screened.
	It is for others in the House to explain their opposition to reductions in VAT on heating, extra winter fuel payments and free TV licences. More than 11 million pensioners have been helped by those measures, which the Labour Government introduced.
	Ours is an ageing society. We should not fear but celebrate that. However, it poses formidable challenges for our key public services in providing better, faster care to higher standards for older people. It means providing services that promote what older people say they want: independence not dependence, and breaking down the Berlin wall between health and social care. Older people need one care system, not two competing systems.
	When I visit health and social care services around the country, I am always impressed by the power of partnership. When the services work well together, older people receive first-class care; when they do not, older people suffer.
	Delayed discharge from hospital occurs when partnerships do not work. The Bill is designed to tackle that problem. On any single day in England, approximately 5,000 people—mainly older people—are trapped in a hospital bed when they are fit to be cared for at home. Consequently, everyone loses.
	For patients who are ready and able to leave, hospital is not the right place. The longer that they are forced to stay, the greater the risk of losing their independence and confidence. For the patient's family and carers, normal living is suspended, doubt replaces certainty and lives are put on hold. Hospitals incur unnecessary costs from looking after patients who are not their responsibility, and the beds that they need are lost. Other patients who are waiting for the beds pay in longer waiting times for treatment and, in the worst cases, in cancelled operations.
	That vicious cycle has existed for too long and we must find a way to break it. Of course, there is no magic wand that can be waved to make the problem disappear. In the past few years, we have tried to introduce policies to deal with it. The Bill builds on what we have done so far.
	We have introduced national standards for the first time and a national system of inspection to improve the way in which services work together for the benefit of older people. There was a time when there were no national standards and a local lottery in care. No one who is serious about ensuring equity in social care wants to go back to those days.
	We have provided extra investment for the health service and social services. Many of my hon. Friends have long argued that social services have too often been the health service's poor relation. The evidence is on their side. I am pleased that the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) nods his head. In the last five years of Conservative government—I believe that the hon. Gentleman was a Health Minister then—spending on social services increased by only 0.1 per cent. a year in real terms. Today, it is growing by more than 3 per cent. From next April, the rate of growth will double to an average of 6 per cent. a year for the next three years.
	Some people, even some of my hon. Friends, will say that that investment is not enough. Perhaps I can do more to help social services. I want to say a little more about that shortly.

Nigel Waterson: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Alan Milburn: In a moment. I shall not take lectures from the Conservative party about how social services cannot afford the Bill's provisions. In government, the Conservative party failed to make the necessary investment, and failed to commit the resources that we are providing. In opposition, it fails to agree to match the extra resources that we are committing for the future. Its record on social services is compound failure: the failures of the present are piled on those of the past. The Conservative party offers only failure for the future. Speaking of that, I shall give way to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson).

Nigel Waterson: Before the Secretary of State leaves the subject of funding, is he aware that his proposals would mean a fine of £2.5 million, on current figures, for East Sussex, equating to 240 residential or nursing placements or 800 home care packages?

Alan Milburn: I am sure that that is what the hon. Gentleman has in front of him, but whether it is true is an entirely different matter. As I shall say in a moment, there are growing resources for social services. Indeed, I made a statement to the House in July this year, in which I set out an earmarked package of measures specifically to build capacity in elderly care services. I do not believe for a moment that local government or social services simply will not spend that money. They want to spend it; they are the people who have been arguing for it. We have listened to their argument, and conceded it. We have provided extra resources for social services, and we now expect that they will use them to build up the necessary capacity.
	That brings me to my third point, the question of building up extra capacity across the care system. In the NHS, for the first time in 30 years, the number of beds in hospitals is rising, not falling. In the community, while it is true that the number of care home beds has fallen, the quantity of care provided in other settings has risen. Our latest estimates are that the number of people helped by intermediate care services has risen by 126,000 in the last couple of years, and that 43,000 more older people receive intensive support at home today than in 1997. As I told the House in July, we will build up capacity further still in the next few years, with a £1 billion package of measures for elderly care services. These resources will allow local councils to pay higher fees to care homes, if that is what is needed to stabilise their local care home market. Although care homes are a good option for some older people, they are not—and must not become—the be all and end all of elderly care services in our country. A broader spectrum of services is needed for older people, to widen choice and to promote independence.

Angela Browning: Is the Secretary of State aware of the independent research by Exeter university, which shows that, in Devon, the 100-plus intermediate care beds allow discharge to take place approximately seven days earlier than would normally be the case, thus saving the NHS about £3 million? Devon county council is concerned, however, that, having achieved that—no doubt, with support from the Secretary of State—it will now be penalised by £1.5 million as a result of having provided that care.

Alan Milburn: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. This is interesting because, all too often, we hear from Conservative Front Benchers—I cannot speak for Conservative Back Benchers; I cannot speak for Front Benchers, come to that—that extra resources in public services do not produce results. But they do, and the hon. Lady is right: intermediate care is working. We have provided extra resources, and, as a consequence, capacity is being built up. We are also providing further extra resources for the next few years. If I know local government and social services at all, I know what they want to do—not least from my discussions with directors and members of local authorities. They want to spend more on social services provision. We have given them the opportunity to do that over the next few years, and we will do so further into the future, too.

Simon Burns: So as not to confuse the House, on the question of help for the elderly outside the residential care setting, will the Secretary of State confirm the answer given by the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), on Monday that the number of households receiving domiciliary care has fallen since September 1997 by 97,900?

Alan Milburn: What the hon. Gentleman is alluding to is simply the number of households receiving some form of home care. However, that is not the only category of people who receive help. Indeed, the number of older people helped, through the public purse, to live at home has increased, not decreased—I can give the hon. Gentleman the latest figures—from 638,000 to 661,000, so his allegation is simply not true.

Gerry Steinberg: Will my right hon. Friend clear up a tremendous confusion in my local authority in Durham? At Question Time recently, he promised to investigate whether the money given to deal with bed blocking in Durham has been used for that purpose. Durham county council's social services department tells me that it has not received the money from the primary care trust; the PCT says that it has. I am not sure how many beds were unblocked by the money that was supposedly given—£1.8 million. He said that he would come back to me, but he has not. Can he clear this up?

Alan Milburn: I am amazed that confusion is reigning in Durham. That sounds a very unlikely state of affairs. The Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), who has responsibility for social services and community care, is looking into the matter. Two things are necessary. First, the local community bodies concerned—PCTs, social services and the acute hospitals—must come together and agree a course of action. That has not always happened. Secondly, if we can be helpful nationally, we will be. If our investigation or our involvement can help, we will be glad to provide such help.
	The situation described by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) is the nub of the problem. When partnership works, it is great; when it does not work, it is a disaster. The problem is that it relies purely on voluntary endeavour. If relationships are good, they are good; if they are bad, they are bad. We do not have an incentive in the system that allows each part of the partnership—health services on the one hand and social services on the other—to accept their responsibilities. That, fundamentally, is what the Bill is about.

Liam Fox: Will the Secretary of State please answer my question simply? If relationships are to improve under the Bill, why are three of the 10 clauses about dispute resolution?

Alan Milburn: The hon. Gentleman knows fine well why that is so. If the world were a perfect place and if partnership were happening everywhere, there would be no need for my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham to stand up and complain, no need for Opposition Members to stand up and complain about the same issue and no need for the Bill to be introduced. Partnership is a very cosy idea and, like every Member, I support it, but to make it work everybody has to accept their responsibilities. Sadly, sometimes they do not do so, which is why legislation is necessary.

David Hinchliffe: When I met consultants at Pinderfields hospital in my constituency over the summer, they told me that about a third of the hospital's beds were occupied by people who did not need to be in them. Some were delayed discharges, but others had been admitted inappropriately by GPs. Does my right hon. Friend intend to extend the principles behind the Bill to fining others who are involved in health care? Is my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate), who is a GP, likely to be fined for wrongly admitting his patients to the local hospital?

Alan Milburn: No, I do not think that that is needed, partly because there are incentives in the system in respect of that. However, my hon. Friend makes a good point. It is perfectly self-evident that one problem that bedevils health and social services is the fact that people are all too often in the wrong part of the system at the wrong time. We are putting the incentives in place to correct the deficit in the NHS that he rightly describes so that in future—not before too long, I hope—I shall be in a position to give PCTs budgets for the longer term rather than just a year. They will have discretion over how to spend that money, whether on primary care, community care or hospital-based care.
	One thing is absolutely certain, and my hon. Friend has argued this over many years: the problems for hospitals will not be resolved purely in hospitals. This country, and elderly people more than anyone else, require a broad spectrum of services—services in hospital, in the community and in primary care and, crucially, social care services.

Howard Stoate: My right hon. Friend is very generous in giving way. May I clarify the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe)? GPs sometimes admit patients inappropriately purely because they cannot get the care packages in the home that they would like and which would keep people in their home. Improving social services care would make that a thing of the past.

Alan Milburn: I agree. I was coming to that. The Opposition, however, all too often seem fixated with the idea that the only form of care that counts is either hospital care or care in a care home. Care in homes is important, giving frail and disabled older people in particular the opportunities that they need; but there should be a broader spectrum of care choice, not just for those older people but for general practitioners and others working in the community who want to ensure that patients are placed appropriately.
	Our extra investment in social services over the next few years will help to finance a 50 per cent. increase on the 1997 total in the number of extra care housing places, or very sheltered accommodation. A further 70,000 older people will receive rehabilitation services each year to prevent them from having to go to hospital unnecessarily in the first place, and to help them leave hospital speedily when it is safe for them to do so. The Bill, moreover, will make those and all intermediate care provision—whether provided by the health service or by social services—free to the user.
	More older people will be able to choose to live at home. In the past, too many have faced a choice between going into a care home and struggling on in their own homes. As a result of our investment, by 2005 twice as many older people will receive the intensive help they need in order to live at home as received it in 1995.

Hilton Dawson: When he next visits Lancaster, would my right hon. Friend care to join me in visiting the Beck View extra sheltered housing project? He would see a tremendous example of partnership between Lancashire county council's social services department and Lancaster city council. Exactly the sort of work he has described is being done, enabling older people to remain in their homes for the rest of their lives.

Alan Milburn: If I visit Lancaster—of which, as my hon. Friend knows, I am extremely fond—I will certainly do as he suggests. Recently, when I was in another great city—Leeds—I saw a superb example of extra care housing. If I remember rightly, it was supported by a local authority, a housing association and the national health service. As my hon. Friend suggests, such things can happen and are happening. What we need to do is build up the capacity, and Opposition Members must recognise that that can be done only if the necessary resources are committed to social services—which is precisely what we are going to do.

David Lepper: I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of the support for carers that exists throughout the House. In view of what he said about ensuring the availability of a range of care options, will he, during the Bill's passage, return to the need to ensure that the current guidance on consulting and providing information for carers about hospital discharge is given the force of law? Will he also consider the provision of free care services for carers when they are needed as part of the care package relating to discharge?

Alan Milburn: I can give my hon. Friend an assurance on the second point. As for the first, we will want to issue guidance to those in all parts of the care system, but particularly to those in hospitals, about how discharge procedures should work. An important part of that is ensuring that not just patients but their families and carers are involved from the outset. Carers do a fantastic job, and the Government have no intention of trying to bypass their role. Indeed, we want to enhance it.

Joan Walley: May I refer my right hon. Friend to another great city, Stoke-on-Trent? How does he intend to secure the necessary accountability in the efforts to produce joint strategies for integrated care for elderly people?
	The Edwards report on services in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire resulted in the transfer of £300,000 from the NHS to social services. However, the money was not actually spent on the services that it was originally provided for. What measures will he introduce in respect of accountability, because we need to ensure that money intended for a specific purpose is used just for that purpose?

Alan Milburn: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The Bill provides a partial answer, and in a moment I shall discuss the question of ensuring that responsibilities are also matched by resource responsibility. However, I can assure her that during this Session, we will introduce further legislation to ensure a better audit trail—in the health service and in social services—of where public money is being spent. We aim to strengthen the inspectorates on the health and the social care sides of the fence, and we intend to impose a legal obligation on both new inspectorates to work together. Otherwise, not only do elderly and vulnerable patients fall through the gap in the middle; sadly, public money sometimes does as well.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Alan Milburn: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), but then I must make some progress.

Paul Burstow: The Secretary of State has already acknowledged the concern of some of his hon. Friends that the additional resources that he has announced are not adequate. Given that the Government's inquiry into health service funding—the Wanless report—made a case for extra investment, and given that the report time and again flagged up the fact that no equivalent work was being done in social services, is it not time for a Wanless inquiry into social care, so that we can be certain that the additional resources are sufficient to deliver on this Government's commitments?

Alan Milburn: We have made our decisions on social services for the foreseeable future—for the next three years—and as the hon. Gentleman knows full well, until very recently social services faced an annual cycle of budgets, because they had no real idea what they were getting. That is changing, and we must maintain that change and provide as much certainty and stability as possible in social services funding. I shall say something more on the matter in a moment, but we will continue to assess what social services actually need to fulfil their obligations. That is the right thing to do, and in particular we want to ensure that they have the resources to build up services in the community and at home.
	As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, people are charged for community equipment such as handrails, walking frames or bath seats. This equipment can make the difference between an older person's becoming dependent, or remaining independent in their own home. The Bill's provisions will remove these charges altogether. Ring-fenced funding for up to 500,000 extra pieces of community equipment will be provided to an estimated 250,000 additional older people, and for the first time they will be provided free of charge.
	The resources are therefore in place to establish capacity in the communities where it is needed by older people. Extra support in the community will, in turn, help to relieve pressure on hospitals. However, resources alone are insufficient to crack the problem of delayed discharge from hospital: reforms are needed alongside resources. Of course, some reforms are already beginning to bite. The first care trusts are now in place, and there are more to come. Under health legislation flexibilities, more than 180 local partnerships are now delivering services worth more than £2 billion a year. Finally, a single process for assessing older people's health and social care needs is being put in place.

Paul Truswell: Given the huge welcome for the long-overdue additional resources that have been spelt out, and given that further resources are planned, why has my right hon. Friend taken it upon himself to introduce this punitive legislation before thoroughly evaluating the use and impact of that money?

Alan Milburn: I do not think that the legislation is at all punitive.

Henry Bellingham: It is punitive.

Alan Milburn: The hon. Gentleman will doubtless have an opportunity to make his speech in a moment or two, but it would be helpful if he would not shout at me during mine. The legislation is not punitive; it is about ensuring that the needs of the older person, rather than of any one part of the care system, always come first.
	The Conservative party is in severe danger of becoming the party of the producer, and I know that it would not want to do that. It always used to pride itself on being the party of the consumer, but perhaps that has gone, too, along with its tradition of economic competence—or indeed being the party of the vulnerable.
	Partnership is the key to delivery, but it works only when both health and social services are clear about their respective responsibilities. It is about giving as well as taking, and about being clear that what comes first is not the needs of any one service but those of every individual user of the service. When older people get trapped in hospital, that is a failure in partnership working.
	Patients can be delayed for many reasons. In too many cases, they are delayed in hospital because social services departments are not fulfilling their responsibility to provide care in the community. Almost 1,000 older people are trapped in hospital simply because they are waiting for their needs to be assessed and their future care planned. Under the current system, for as long as elderly people remain in hospital, they do so at the cost of the national health service. There is no incentive for local government to tackle the problem. Indeed, there is every incentive to leave them stuck there. The Bill is not about imposing wholly new responsibilities on social services departments but about ensuring that they fulfil their existing ones.

Desmond Turner: The Brighton and Hove authority has done exactly what my right hon. Friend is asking: it has entered into close partnership working with the local health bodies, and a care trust is emerging, but despite its best efforts there is still a serious problem of bed blocking, which is outside its control. Under the Bill, it is quite possible that the extra resources that the social services department has been given—thank you very much—could be used to pay punitive fines because of bed blocking that is outside its control.

Alan Milburn: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the Secretary of State replies, let me say to the House that interventions are getting longer and longer, and hon. Members should really learn the art of the concise intervention, especially when they are taking time out of the time that they might hope to have later, if they catch my eye.

Alan Milburn: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will take that as a hint to get on with it.
	On my hon. Friend's question, that is precisely why we are making resources available to social services. Of course, there is a choice. We are giving £1 billion of extra cash, largely earmarked for elderly care services, and social services departments have a choice—although earmarking restricts their discretion to some extent, I suppose—about whether to use those extra resources to build up capacity, which is what they tell us they want to do, and is indeed the reason why we agreed to give them the extra money, or whether they want to transfer resources to the health service. Our understanding is that they want to build up services in the community, and they now have an opportunity to do just that. I perfectly understand that, in the days when budgets were rising by 0.1 per cent. a year in real terms, that was not possible, but we are now moving into an era in which resources will be rising by 6 per cent. a year in real terms, not only for one or two years but for three whole years.
	It is not as though social services departments have not known that this measure was coming. Indeed, there are already extra resources in place. The day after the Budget in April, I stood here and announced precisely that this measure was coming. In October, we provided £300 million through the building capacity grant, so that social services could start the process of building up services in the community. However, I take my hon. Friend's point and I shall return to it later.
	In all fairness, the costs of care should surely fall where they belong. Under the new system proposed in the Bill, when patients are ready and able to leave hospital but care is not provided for them in the community when it should be, the costs will indeed pass to social services, but there is also a requirement on the national health service to play its part in the discharge process by giving advance notice to social services that a patient may need community care on leaving hospital.
	Under the Bill, where social services do not fulfil their responsibilities, they will have to meet the costs that the hospital incurs in providing care for patients whose discharge has been needlessly delayed. Where similar approaches have been used in other countries, they have worked. Opposition Members are always saying that we should learn from those experiences, and we are trying to do just that. The precise details of the scheme in Sweden are not the same as what we propose here—not least because the structure of health and social care is rather different—but the number of hospital beds occupied by delayed patients was halved in that country, and the average wait for discharge was reduced to just three days.
	Some have objected that the Bill will create a perverse incentive for hospitals to discharge patients too early, only for them to have to be readmitted. I understand those concerns, and that is why we have put in place the necessary safeguards to prevent that happening. In future, hospitals will be rated—and therefore rewarded—according to how well they do in reducing emergency readmission rates. What is more, under the new system that we are introducing to pay hospitals for what they do, they will not receive funding for patients who, within a certain period, are readmitted to hospital with the same complaint or a complication of it. Again, the incentive will be on the hospital to discharge appropriately, not inappropriately.
	The fundamental objection to the Bill, however, has been that it is all stick and no carrot, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) noted. The criticism is that social services are being given a new responsibility without adequate resources. Let me address that in two ways. First, this is not a new responsibility: it exists today. The system simply does not ensure that costs fall where responsibilities lie. Secondly, the Budget provides substantial extra resources for social services, and the means to increase capacity in community services. Incidentally, we took account of any likely costs to social services of this measure in making those resources available.
	However, I have considered this point carefully and listened to the representations that have been made today, and on previous occasions, by some Labour Members and by local authorities and local government organisations. The maximum cost that social services would face in payments to hospitals under the Bill would be about £100 million in any one year. That estimate presumes three things.
	The first is that councils make no progress whatever beyond the targets that they themselves have already set to reduce the level of delayed discharges from hospitals. Secondly, the £100 million estimate pre-supposes that social services do not use the 6 per cent. annual increase in resources to put in place new services to help reduce delayed discharges from hospitals still further. Finally, the estimate presumes that none of the £1 billion—most of which is earmarked for elderly care services, as I said earlier—gets spent on those very services. I do not believe for a moment that that is what local authorities will do—indeed, they will not be able to do that, as so much of the money is earmarked. Therefore, I do not believe either that social services will have to pay £100 million to the health service.
	None the less, I have decided, for each of the next three years, to transfer an extra £100 million, on top of the resources already made available, from the NHS budget to social services for each full year in which the scheme operates. I am doing so in order to provide a positive incentive to ensure that the regime is not punitive and to make the system work. This extra £100 million will now enable individual councils to gain rather than lose from the system—provided, of course, that they make available the community services needed to reduce delayed discharges from hospitals. Hospitals can gain too. As social services reduce the pressures on hospitals, their costs will fall.
	My intention is not, and never has been, to punish local government but to pursue a real and sustained reduction in delayed discharge from hospital. Frankly, there can now be no excuse for social services not to fulfil their responsibilities to older people. I have tried, therefore, to address the legitimate concerns that have been raised by my hon. Friends and others during the course of the debate.

Edward O'Hara: I appreciate the purpose of the Bill, particularly the point about giving the social services extra funding to ensure that they are not punished. However, I have been listening carefully and there seems to be one omission from the Bill—the older people themselves. It seems that they are being treated rather instrumentally. Will my hon. Friend comment on what consultation might be available to older people or their families, or advocacy services if they are not capable?

Alan Milburn: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The philosophy at the heart of the Bill is straightforward. What counts is the user of the service, not health services or social services. They exist for a purpose—to serve the public and, in this case, to serve older people. For a variety of reasons—some to do with resources, some to do with historical capacity, some to do with the structural deficit in our health and social care system—too often older people are let down. That is simply not good enough.
	The Bill is about doing what older people want. Older people always say that they want to be independent, not dependent. They want to live in their own home; they do not want to be in a care home, by and large, or in hospitals. Hospitals are not places where people choose to go—they want to get in as quickly as possible and to get out as quickly as possible. The philosophy of the Bill is about ensuring that the older person's needs are fully taken into account. As I said earlier, it is important that the views of individual older people and those of their carers and families are fully taken into account in the discharge process, and that is what we will do.

Andrew Lansley: rose—

Alan Milburn: I will give way and then I really must wind up.

Andrew Lansley: If the Secretary of State were to act on what he said in response to the previous intervention, would the Bill reflect that patients exercising their choice under the choice directive would not lead to fines on social services? What guarantee will he give that the exercise of patient choice will not lead to costs and fines for social services?

Alan Milburn: There are two issues about the exercise of choice. The hon. Gentleman talks about the direction on choice. There are two groups of people. Self-funders effectively pay for their own care and are not the responsibility of social services. However, social services have an obligation towards people who are their responsibility. There is a direction on choice, of course, and people should be able to exercise choice. However, the direction on choice has never, under the previous Conservative Administration or ours, been about older people being allowed needlessly to occupy hospital beds when they are ready, willing and able to go home. There are important issues surrounding the direction of choice, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but what most people want is simple. They want to get in and out of hospital as quickly as possible.
	I have today provided further resources to local government because we have been told that the problem is resources. I have provided the extra resources; we have assessed the cost of the fines. I have covered the cost of the so-called fines and frankly, there can now be no further excuses for social services not to fulfil their responsibilities.

Eric Martlew: My right hon. Friend is being very generous to local authorities, but he has not provided any extra money. He has actually taken £100 million out of the NHS, and that is a worry to me.

Alan Milburn: That is true. [Interruption.] I hope that I am not intruding on private grief. I have transferred £100 million from the national health service to social services. It will help the national health service do its job because if we do not build up social services, NHS hospitals will not be able to do their job. I realise that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) is hurriedly rewriting his speech as a consequence of my announcement, but it is no use for him to complain about transfer of resources—he is against resources. He is against resources going into the health service. He is against resources going into social services.
	For the sake of people in hospital who need to come out and for the sake of people who need to be in hospital, we must address delayed discharges once and for all. The Bill is about making the system work for older people who are needlessly stuck in hospital. It is about putting older people first. It is about helping them to get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. For the first time, the Bill introduces a positive incentive to ensure that the resources of health and social services are directly linked to the responsibilities that they share. It will help to ensure that resources provided for social services are actually spent on social services. The Bill is fair to the national health service, it is fair to local government and, above all, it is fair to older people. I commend it to the House.

Liam Fox: I beg to move, To leave out from 'That' to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	Xthis House declines to give a Second Reading to the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill because it would be divisive and undermine successful working partnerships between the NHS and Social Services Departments; imposes a negative fining system on local authorities rather than promoting positive policies to tackle the problems facing community care; fails to redress the loss of capacity due to over 60,000 beds being closed down in residential care since 1997 and the closure of over 2,000 care homes; fails to recognise that the number of households receiving domiciliary care has fallen by almost 100,000 households; and unfairly penalises local authorities without improving the system of discharging patients from hospital."
	As ever, whether it be the shambles of the fire dispute, the mishandling of the economy or the Government's increasing failure to deal with the woes of the national health service, their approach is exactly the same: to ignore criticism and to pass the buck. However, the problem with which the Bill deals is entirely of the making of the Secretary of State for Health and his Ministers.
	For the past few years, we have been warning of the inevitable consequences of Government policy, and our predictions, unlike those of the Chancellor, turned out to be right. In April 2002, there were an estimated 511,300 places in residential settings for the long-stay care of elderly and physically disabled people across all sectors in the United Kingdom. That is a drop of more than 60,000 places since Labour came to office.
	By April 2002, capacity in all those sectors had decreased by 64,300 from the 1996 peak—a decrease of 11 per cent. If we correct those figures to take account of population change, the decrease is even greater: about 20 per cent. from the peak. Most frightening of all, despite all that Conservative Members and even some Labour Back-Benchers have said, 14,000 places were lost last year—the biggest single fall since Labour came to power.

Hilton Dawson: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us about the quality of those residential places? Why should elderly people have to opt for residential care rather than for the wide range of options that will keep them in their homes and support them in the community?

Liam Fox: Indeed. The drop in the number of care home places would not be so worrying were it not for the drop in the provision of domiciliary care. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) has pointed out, almost 100,000 fewer households have been supplied with domiciliary care since the Government came to office.
	What is the effect of all that on the NHS itself? First, as a result of delayed discharges the number of cancelled operations has risen by almost a third since 2000. The Government's own figures show that 77,800 operations were cancelled in 2001, compared with 50,000 in the year they came to power.
	Secondly, the number of emergency readmissions has increased as patients are discharged early to try to meet the Government's targets. Over the past year, more than 500,000 patients had to be readmitted; in 10 health authorities the increase in readmissions was more than 10 per cent.
	Some of the Government's answers and the Secretary of State's response to the problem are ludicrous. Hospitals will not be funded if patients are readmitted, so presumably if a patient with angina is discharged from hospital, suffers a myocardial infarction and has to go into coronary care, the hospital will not be funded for that. What a brilliant proposal—extremely helpful to NHS trusts, I am sure.

Kali Mountford: I admire the hon. Gentleman's concern about delayed discharges. What resources would he commit to ensure that discharges were not delayed? How much money would he give?

Liam Fox: It is a matter of priorities. If we were in office we would not be wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on the Government's pointless waiting list targets. We would not be employing the extra tens of thousands of bureaucrats that the Government require for an endless paperchase which today's proposals will make worse. We want to talk about whether the measure will make whatever funding is available work better or worse for patient care. The answer is clear: it will work worse because the situation is getting worse.
	In the first quarter of this year, 8 per cent. of elderly patients who were discharged were readmitted within 28 days, and 3.2 per cent. were readmitted within seven. That is a massive increase even on just a year ago. What is the Government's response to this very complex situation? They have produced this pointless, ill-thought-out, punitive—a word used by the hon. Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. O'Hara)—contradictory and self-defeating Bill.

Joan Humble: rose—

Phyllis Starkey: rose—

Liam Fox: I shall give way to one of the revenge of the clones later. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. The House must quieten down; this is a debate, and we should have reasoned argument on both sides.

Liam Fox: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Eric Martlew: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is it right for an hon. Member to refer to another as a clone?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have heard quite a number of expressions which on the whole I would prefer not to be used, but I do not think that that word has been classified as non-parliamentary language.

Liam Fox: You can always tell when hon. Members are getting desperate, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	The trouble with the Bill is that it tries to blame local authorities for something that is beyond their control. It will place new burdens and costs on them. It is based on false assumptions. It is will increase bureaucracy and red tape, damage health and social care relationships, produce perverse incentives and increase the likelihood of decisions on care being taken inappropriately. In other words, the Bill runs the risk of producing exactly the opposite of what the Government claim it will produce.

David Hinchliffe: The central thrust of Conservative party policy on the care of the elderly appears to involve more and more institutional care. On the hon. Gentleman's travels around Europe—I met him on a plane a few weeks ago—has he dropped in on Denmark, which has a similar proportion of elderly and very elderly people to this country, but no old people's homes at all?

Liam Fox: That is a very useful point. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I would agree on one thing: for elderly patients, as for all other patients, the most important phrase is Xappropriateness of care", which involves having a full range of provision. Some patients require and want long-term care in nursing or residential homes, but that will not be available if the capacity decreases as quickly as it has in the past five years, and the Bill will do nothing to help.
	The Bill will add substantially to the burdens on already hard-pressed local authorities. At least the Government are being consistent. Let us consider the list of obligations imposed without proper funding in recent years, starting with flooding. Emergency grants from central Government are not even remotely covering all the costs of recent floods, as millions of council tax payers are about to find out. The Homelessness Act 2002, passed during the previous parliamentary Session, imposed new burdens on local authorities to draw up new homelessness strategies. Air targets have been devised by Brussels and announced by the Minister for the Environment but are being funded by no one. Waste recycling will cost at least £55 million, and there are asylum costs, travel concessions and the huge burden of children's services, the costs of which fall on local government and accounted for 64 per cent. of the total overspend last year.

Desmond Turner: rose—

Phyllis Starkey: rose—

Liam Fox: I have given way already and will do so again later.
	There is no point in Ministers saying that they are giving more money to local authorities, because the rate at which they are piling on responsibilities is greater than the rate at which funding is being applied to local authorities to cope with those responsibilities.
	Most absurd of all, the Secretary of State said today that the Government have introduced the Bill because bed blocking is costing the NHS money and local government must play its part in sharing responsibility, but what are they proposing to do? They will fine the NHS £100 million and give the money to social services so that, when they fine them, they can give back the money. If that is not complete bureaucratic madness, I do not know what is. It can only help bureaucrats and produce paperchases; it will do nothing to help local government, hospitals or the patients themselves.

Martin Smyth: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's giving way on that point because I was lost earlier when I heard that health service costs would be reduced. Is it not a fact that the procedures in the health service put up the costs, so if beds are vacated—for which we would be thankful—there will be more operations, more procedures and increased costs and therefore health service costs will not be reduced?

Liam Fox: The hon. Gentleman may be right. It is certainly true that despite the increased amount of money that the Government have undoubtedly put into the NHS in real terms, the level of activity coming out is very much less than predicted. Funding has increased by almost 11 per cent. in real terms, but the level of activity is up by less than 2 per cent. Clearly, therefore, there is a huge amount of wastage.
	It seems that Ministers are not yet content with the amount of costs that they are imposing on local government. When one asks local authorities how much they think the scheme will cost, one finds that their estimate is a lot higher than that of the Secretary of State. The Association of London Government estimates that the cost to it alone will be £25 million a year. Buckinghamshire estimates that it will cost £2 million; Essex that it will cost £3 million; Cambridgeshire, £1.4 million; Surrey, between £6 million and £7 million; and Kent, £5.5 million. What are Ministers trying to do? Do they have any understanding of the real problems of local government in the real world? I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey).

Phyllis Starkey: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for at least demonstrating, unlike the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), that he notices women and realises that they are individuals, not clones. Is he suggesting that councils should not fulfil their current obligations unless they get additional money from Government? Why does he think that some councils can fulfil their obligations but not others? Does he not think that the councils bear some responsibility for that?

Liam Fox: Of course, they are supposed to work in a partnership wherever possible. But the whole point of the debate is to examine whether the Bill will improve the working relationships between health and social services, or whether it will make them more difficult. As I pointed out to the Secretary of State, if he thinks that the Bill will improve the relationship, why is 30 per cent. of the entire Bill devoted to new bodies being introduced to resolve disputes which, as the Bill admits, do not currently exist? That is not an improvement in the working of the current system, which is what everybody would like.
	Much of the Government's case has been based on their interpretation of the system in Sweden. On 18 April 2002, the Secretary of State made a statement in the House of Commons, announcing the Command Paper, XDelivering the NHS Plan", in which he said that the Government were impressed by the success in getting delayed discharges from hospitals down of the system in countries like Sweden and Denmark. Had the Secretary of State made a visit to examine the project? No, he had not. According to the Health Service Journal, the Government's decision to bring in cross-charging was taken without even consulting Gert Alaby, the architect of the Swedish model on which Mr. Wanless had placed so much emphasis—although it was also reported that Mr. Wanless had not met Mr. Alaby either. Yet the Department of Health said recently that there had been conversations with a Xnumber of people" in Sweden.
	If the Secretary of State or Mr. Wanless want to know about the problems in Sweden, they can ask the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound), who made a telling intervention in the Queen's Speech debate:
	XMay I point out some of the differences between that model and what we have been discussing today? In Sweden there was a two-year lead-in time before the proposals were implemented. In addition, local authorities had responsibility for a vast range of alternative provision, including direct commissioning of health care."—[Official Report, 14 November 2002; Vol. 394, c. 231.]
	The hon. Gentleman seems to have a much greater grasp than the Secretary of State. Had the Government looked at the model, they would have found that Swedish local authorities are responsible for social care as well as hospital care, so they can affect patient flows into the acute sector. That is not possible in our system, because the primary care trusts have discretion over the flow of patients into the hospitals, but local government is to be made financially liable for discharging—it will be punished for something over which it has absolutely no control. Where is the fairness in such a proposal? Do Ministers have any idea of the damage that they might be inflicting on the ground?
	Several Labour Members, including the Secretary of State, have mentioned working relationships. The central proposal in the Bill risks undoing what has undoubtedly been a recent improvement in the NHS: the increased willingness of health and social care departments to work together. That still has a long way to go but, in the words of one Labour Member, Xthe direction of travel is positive when viewed as part of the complete patient journey," which in English means that things are getting a bit better on the ground. The real change that the Bill might introduce was well expressed by the British Medical Association, which fears that the plans will seriously damage working relationships:
	Xthe BMA supports co-operation and improving co-ordination between health and social services to provide seamless high quality services for vulnerable patients who may be adversely affected by the barriers that exist between social services and the NHS. The proposal for fines has the potential to damage some of the good relationships that have evolved with the greater opportunities for joint working. "
	It is not alone in that view. The Association of Directors of Social Services, the NHS Confederation and the Local Government Association made the following joint statement:
	XReal progress has been made in forging partnerships between health and local government, including the particularly successful joint work to alleviate winter pressures."
	We would all welcome that. The statement continued:
	XA recent Audit Commission report endorsed the successful partnerships already in place. We want to build on these to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, reduce delayed discharges and provide integrated health and social care services. It would be a retrograde step if the current proposals undermined this trust and led to the development of adversarial relationships rather than cooperation between health and local government".

Eric Martlew: rose—

Gerry Steinberg: rose—

Liam Fox: I will give way in a moment.
	It is typical of the Government to believe that they know better than those on the front line who are already responsible for these services, and so like them to produce yet another one-size-fits-all blueprint designed in Whitehall against all the advice of those with hands-on experience.

Gerry Steinberg: I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, although I do not necessarily agree with all his comments. What would he do to a social services department that receives money to use to unblock beds in hospitals but does not use that money accordingly? What sanctions would he use against authorities that do not use the money for the purpose for which it is given?

Liam Fox: When we in the House talk about sanctions, I think we are in danger of believing that Whitehall always knows best about resolving these problems. What has been happening on the ground—I am the first to admit that the approach has definitely improved—is an evolution of understanding between health and social care and an improvement in the working relationship. That is not universal, and the relationship still leaves a lot to be desired in some parts of the country, but it is improving. Why risk undermining all that by introducing a Bill that will set one part of the system against another? That cannot make any sense. When all those on the ground are saying that this is mistake, why are the Government pushing ahead with a proposal that can only lead to greater acrimony?
	Under the proposals, local authorities will come under pressure as never before. The question we must ask is whether these changes will increase or decrease the probability of finding the most suitable care and type of placement for individual patients' needs. Alternatively, are the proposals likely to mean that, to avoid financial penalties, patients will be removed from hospital to the first available place, whether it is the right place or not? That is a major problem. Are we likely to see a repeat of some of the awful cases of inappropriate care being provided for elderly people? Elderly patients have a right to feel less secure under these changes—for the first time, they are being regarded in the system as a financial liability to be moved around for cost reasons.
	The potential for perverse incentives as a result of the Bill is equally worrying. The hon. Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) raised the issue of the impact on general practitioners. Let me tell him one of the problems that the Bill will produce. GPs who are already finding it difficult to get their patients placed in a care home will come to understand something new: precedence will be given by local authorities to patients who are already in acute wards in a hospital. What will be the inevitable result? It will be the creation of a perverse incentive whereby GPs know that they are most likely to be able to get a patient into a care home by first getting them into an acute unit. That has the potential to cause more delayed discharges, by blocking more hospital beds, than we have at present. I am sure that that is not what the Government intend, but that will be the effect in the real world. It is the inevitable result of the Government not understanding how the system works in reality.

Roger Gale: As the Secretary of State was unable or unwilling to answer this point, perhaps my hon. Friend can touch on it. The logical extension of what he is saying is that a problem that is already bad will be made worse. One of the principal causes of bed blocking is that families will not accept the provision that is being offered and want choice. How will that dispute be resolved within a three-day time limit? Will not beds be even more blocked as a result of what my hon. Friend describes?

Liam Fox: As I said, there is the great possibility that things will deteriorate rather than improve as a result of the Bill. I am sure that Ministers do not intend it to have that effect, but that is what will happen, and it is the Bill, not the intention, that we are discussing. We have to take into account what we judge to be its effect on real patients in the real world, not what we think Ministers might want to happen.
	The Bill leaves far too many questions unanswered. Those who followed the sad affair of the Government's creation of the care home crisis will be aware that there was much consensus on the Care Standards Act 2000, and that the damage came not from the contents of the Act itself, but from the ministerial regulations that were applied later on, which were recently subjected to a U-turn. Indeed, the Government's standard approach is to produce the merest skeleton of a Bill only to flesh it out later with mile upon mile of red tape and regulation. It is usually a sign that they are making it up as they go along.
	The Bill falls neatly into that category. Far too much of it depends on subsequent regulation to make it work and many of the important questions go unanswered. For example, who lays down the level of fines? The Secretary of State estimates that local authorities will be liable to pay a total of £100 million, but who sets the fine? How often will it be changed? Will there be an upper limit or will it be at the discretion of a future Secretary of State? Will fines apply if there is no appropriate bed, no other placement or no individual care available? Who will make those decisions? What will the Secretary of State do to determine who is, or is expected to become, a qualifying hospital patient? What procedures will be used and how does he justify such a ludicrous level of mismanagement when uses such achingly funny rhetoric about devolving power?
	Then we have the problem of the dispute resolution mechanism. The disputes do not exist at the moment, but the Government admit that they will arise when the Bill is implemented. Three clauses out of 10 relate to the resolution of conflicts. Strategic health authorities are being established to steer the panels, which means that the NHS will be judge and jury in disputes between the NHS and local authorities. What sort of people will sit on the panels? What qualifications will they need? Most importantly, how much time and money will this nonsense divert from patient care into unnecessary, pointless and mindless bureaucratic squabbles?

Nigel Waterson: Is my hon. Friend aware of Age Concern's opinion that the Government's proposals may be in conflict with standard 2 of the national service framework for older people, which specifies that older people should be treated as individuals and enabled to make choices about their care?

Liam Fox: I am sure that that is the correct approach. To be fair, I am not saying that the Government intend to do otherwise. Regardless of their intentions, however, the Bill could become another Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and have the opposite effect of that intended. The Bill is a bad piece of legislation. Although it includes some good things that could command support on both sides of the House, they are totally outweighed by the dreadful provisions that I have outlined.
	The Bill will not achieve its aims. It may well result in exactly the opposite. It is unfair to local government; it will divert time and effort away from patient care into bureaucratic games; it will create perverse incentives; and it will increase the risk of inappropriate care, especially for the elderly. It is part of the paperchase NHS created by the Government. It is about throughput not outcomes. It is about a XNever mind the quality, feel the width" health service. It punishes one group for the failure of others over whom they have no control. Of all new Labour's crazy ideas, this is the craziest. I urge the House to oppose the Bill before untold damage is done.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

Glenda Jackson: Setting aside the somewhat hysterical contribution of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), I think it would be impossible to find anyone in the House or the country who would argue against the basis of the Government's proposal to have a national and properly integrated, multifaceted, high-quality service for older people. I do not think that anyone would argue with the Government's attempts to ensure that taxpayers' money earmarked for the provision of integrated social services for the elderly is spent. There can be no possible argument with the fact that the Government have their heart in the right place. They are clearly committed to ensuring that care for the elderly is not limited exclusively to residential care or nursing care, or to the practice of keeping elderly people in hospital long after their medical condition warrants a discharge.
	Local authorities have been criticised for failing to spend the taxpayers' money that is accorded to them. That criticism could not, by the widest stretch of the imagination, be levelled against my local authority, Camden. It is not only council of the year, but a beacon authority for the care that it provides to elderly people. It has also more than spent the money that was earmarked by the Government for the provision of social services. It has exceeded the £30,876,000 given to it by more than £2 million. There is no doubt that the authority takes on board the thrust of the Government's policies, and not only in the provision of integrated services for the elderly. It is the first local authority to create an integrated mental health and social services trust. I pay tribute to the Government and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for ensuring that that was created.
	Having been as polite as it is possible to be, I come to the difficult bit, which is to be critical of the Government. I would be less than honest if I did not say that it is my bounden duty to criticise aspects of their proposals. I am most critical of the idea that social services are exclusively responsible for ensuring that an elderly person does not remain in hospital longer than necessary. My constituency is part of an inner-London borough. Like other such boroughs, we have a suppliers' market for residential nursing home places. The homes charge and obtain higher fees for clients from the private sector. My local authority has received additional funding for the building care component, but there is still a desperate shortage of places, not least because patients in the two main teaching hospitals in the borough of Camden are not exclusively Camden residents. Social services departments outside Camden find places for their residents within my borough's boundaries because the treatment there is best suited to their needs.
	There is another problem. It arises, curiously, from the fact that the Government have been hoisted on the petard of their own success. They listened to what hon. Members said about providing individuals with the ability and, indeed, the money to arrange their own domiciliary care. That has had an impact on local authorities, especially ones like Camden, because it removes the ability for authorities to block buy domiciliary care when elderly individuals return home.
	Difficulties also arise in hospitals and medical teams when they have to determine whether an individual is ready to leave hospital. If they agree that someone can leave, the next problem is ensuring that that person can return to an independent and healthy life.
	As I said, Camden has spent more than central Government gave it to provide integrated services for elderly people. It has increased the numbers of step-down beds and domiciliary beds and transformed some of its housing stock so that it can take people in wheelchairs, but there is still an element of bed blocking.
	In some cases the failure to remove an elderly person from hospital has to do with limited capacity in occupational therapy. That point is anecdotal and I do not have figures to support it. As a Conservative Back Bencher said, there may be difficulties because the family disagree with what is proposed for their relative. It is not unusual for an elderly person to have no family or for the only person capable of caring for them to be as old and, in some instances, as frail as they are, so a return to home, even with a properly integrated programme of domiciliary care, may not be the best solution for that individual.
	There seems to me to be gross inequity in the Government's proposals. I listened with interest to what the Secretary of State said about setting a ceiling of £100 million on the fines that may be imposed on local authorities and about taking that money out of the NHS. The fact remains, however, that local authority social services are not exclusively responsible for delayed discharges.

Andrew Murrison: The hon. Lady makes a good point with which I agree. Does she also agree that readmission is not exclusively the fault of hospitals? She referred to the multidisciplinary teams responsible for discharge delays, but they may also be responsible for high readmission rates, so it would be wholly wrong to fine hospitals for those rates, for the same reason that it would be wrong to fine social services departments.

Glenda Jackson: I hesitate to agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that it is wholly wrong to impose fines because there are examples of best practice, certainly in hospitals. I know that some hospitals—not, I hasten to add, in my constituency—are dilatory in tackling these issues, and I am perfectly prepared to accept that some councils are less than good and do not spend the entire amount earmarked for social care for the elderly. However, we delude ourselves if we believe that the integrated, high quality care that we all want our elderly people to receive will be delivered by proposals that, in targeting bad councils, have a deleterious effect on local authorities that are committed to, and doing their best to deliver, those services.
	I am concerned about the time afforded by the Government for consultation. There is an opportunity to reconsider the model on which the proposals have been based. I am not for one moment saying that they will not be effective, but this may not be the best model for achieving the aim to which the Government are clearly committed. There should be an opportunity for local authorities that are delivering high quality services and want to improve their delivery to make representations to the Government about the model that they would introduce. There are also justifiable concerns about the additional costs to local authorities, which are inherent in the Bill.
	There is no uniformity among the many agencies responsible for ensuring that elderly people, once discharged from hospital, receive the care that is best for them. There are variations in practices and disagreements about which produces the best care. I am fully prepared to accept that the Government's heart is in the right place, but the basis of implementing their proposals is partnership, which means that the constituent partners who will eventually deliver these high quality services have at least to agree on the basics. It would be nice if they all had similar information technology, but they do not, so any attempt to track down the best person to provide a service among a wide range of service providers is time consuming. As we know, time equals money, so additional burdens may be placed on local authorities.
	As I said, I strongly believe that the Government's heart is in the right place. We all want to see the highest quality services delivered, but I urge the Secretary of State to consider the points that will undoubtedly be made because there are dangers in the Bill, even though I will, of course, vote for its Second Reading.

Paul Burstow: The Secretary of State told us that there is no magic wand to deal with delayed discharges, and I agree. The Bill is not a solution to that problem; it will simply exacerbate it and cause further problems in the NHS and the whole care system. The right hon. Gentleman's announcement of a £100 million sweetener will do nothing to remove the bitter taste of the Bill. The fact that that money is to be taken from the NHS, given to social services and then returned to the NHS is an admission that the Bill is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a crude market mechanism that does not reflect the complexities of the situation.
	The Secretary of State told us that the proposed penalty system is based on one that was introduced 10 years ago in Sweden, but the penalties introduced there were only part of a much wider set of reforms to that country's care system and they were arrived at after a good deal of consultation and debate. They aimed to shift the centre of gravity in the Swedish care system out of the acute sector and into community care systems. That is not the aim of this proposal, which is grafted on to a system that includes a large amount of private and independent provision, whereas care in Sweden is largely provided by the state, through local govt. By contrast, in the UK, we have seen the NHS withdraw from long-term care, and a fragmented, unplanned set of arrangements put in its place.
	Reading the report of the Health Committee's inquiry into delayed discharges earlier this year, I found that some of the most interesting hearings were those with the Department's officials. Their ideas do not appear to have got through to the Ministers framing the policy and the measures in this Bill. For example, the chief inspector of social services told the Committee in February:
	XOur concern about the over-75s is that delayed discharges here are a symptom that we need to do something about the totality of the system for older people. Actually just homing in on the issue of delayed discharges is concealing that there is a systems issue."
	It is a systems issue, yet the Bill provides a quick fix by introducing a single incentive that will have a series of consequences, many of which are not those intended by Ministers. It is certainly not a solution for the whole system.

Roger Williams: The Bill deals with England and Wales, but both health and social services are devolved responsibilities, so I hoped that this would be enabling legislation within the spirit of the devolution settlement. In Wales, the Assembly already provides free care for six weeks after discharge from hospital. It would like, if it had the power, to provide free long-term care for the elderly, which it believes would prevent unnecessary admission to hospital and promote prompt discharge.

Paul Burstow: My hon. Friend has made an important point about whether the Bill should apply equally to England and Wales. It is one thing for English Health Ministers to want to put the proposal into practice, but it is entirely different for it to apply automatically to Wales. I hope that as the Bill proceeds through the House, we will find a way for Wales to have discretion. Given the Government's commitment to devolution, I hope that the Bill will include powers to enable the Welsh Assembly to go as far as it wants in providing long-term care and making personal care free on the basis of an assessment of need.

Tom Clarke: My interest in these matters derives from the fact that I introduced a measure as far back as 1986 covering the whole UK, so I am interested in seeing how the Bill progresses. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the Secretary of State, who made an important point—not mentioned by the Opposition spokesman—when he said that of course we want to consult patients, their families and their advocates?

Roger Gale: How do you do that in three days?

Paul Burstow: The Bill does not stipulate the patient's right of consent to discharge arrangements. Nothing in the Bill stipulates the carer's right to be consulted about whether or not they wish to continue to take on a caring duty or, indeed, take it on in the first place. There have been representations from many organisations about the absence of those issues from the Bill. I hope that in Committee we can move beyond the vague promises that that will be dealt with in regulations to cast-iron commitments that it will be dealt with in the Bill.
	The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) asked how consultation could be completed in three days. We have been told that the Government are satisfied that we will have a partial assessment of someone's needs while they are in hospital. What on earth is that? How does it relate to the single assessment that the Government said would be in place from April this year? We now have the spectacle of the Government wanting to rush through discharges and implement an assessment procedure that does not include everyone who ought to be part of the process, shunting patients into an unsatisfactory interim provision and leaving them there too long.

Phyllis Starkey: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many local authorities, including my own, have already attempted to solve that problem by providing heavily supported, if I can so describe it, accommodation for patients who have been discharged—in my local authority's case, for up to six weeks—to give them time to decide whether they need to go into full-time residential care or go back home? Is that not better than leaving those patients in a hospital bed, which is unsuitable for elderly patients?

Paul Burstow: It is better, but there will be a short decision-making process of three days to get someone out of hospital, which does not address their long-term care. We need a process that ensures that appropriate judgments are made. The hon. Lady must address the fact that the provision that her local authority has been able to make does not exist universally across the country, and is unlikely to come on-stream when the Bill is enacted. I want to try to explain why that is the case.
	The Bill is all about treating symptoms, and does not tackle causes such as lack or loss of capacity upstream and downstream in our care system. Budget pressures have forced social services departments in the past 10, 15 or 20 years increasingly to ration access to care. Eligibility criteria have been drawn ever tighter as a result. Indeed, the Local Government Association says that two thirds of local authorities have narrowed their criteria still further in the past two years. They have done so by denying help to people with moderate needs or carers; by making people with high needs wait, often in their own home; and by setting limits on price, quantity and quality of care. In the past 20 years, social services departments have withdrawn home help services that offer domestic help and have concentrated care on the most disabled and dependent, in stark contrast to what is done in Sweden—the exemplar that the Government have chosen to use for the Bill. In Sweden, people still have home help services, which cover such activities as cleaning, shopping, outings, social contact and so on. The penalty system to be introduced by the Bill will undermine efforts to develop the preventive services that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) and many other Members believe should be widely available. Investment in prevention can postpone the onset of disablement, disability, illness and dependency, and has the biggest long-term impact on the problem of inappropriate admissions to hospital that result in delays in discharge.
	It is not only upstream that there are capacity problems—there are serious capacity constraints downstream as well. We have serious staffing problems in the care system across the country, including a 15 per cent. vacancy rate for occupational therapists. Indeed, 40 per cent. of local authorities report severe difficulties in recruiting occupational therapists, who are key players in facilitating a speedy discharge from hospital, enabling adaptations and changes in someone's property to be made quickly. If the OT is not there, who will do the assessments? That issue was considered by the Select Committee, but I do not think that it reached a final conclusion on how to progress the matter.

Joan Humble: The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that in Lancashire occupational therapists are employed by the health authority. If the OT is not there to provide a service, that is not social services' fault, but the fault of the health service. That complicates the situation.

Paul Burstow: Basically, there are not enough OTs to go round. There is also the spectre of social services and the health service competing for a scarce resource. Until additional OTs are in place, we shall continue to have logjams in the system, as there is a fundamental lack of capacity. Those capacity constraints also apply to home care staff—the latest figures suggest that there is a 10 per cent. vacancy rate. We have serious problems recruiting such staff because they are low paid and undervalued. Unless we tackle that, we shall continue to have problems and will certainly not fulfil the Government's ambition to have more people cared for in their own homes.
	Because of rationing, fewer people, as has been said, are receiving home care. The figure may be disputed, but 110,000 fewer home care packages are being delivered. Ministers say that that is because people are getting other services instead, such as meals on wheels, day care and so on. It is clear, however, that the figures for home care support have gone down. People who get such care, however, are getting it for more hours because they are more dependent. The Government's mantra is prevention. In practice, however, when they are judged on the figures, their emphasis is on dealing with crises and the most dependent people, and not prevention.
	Capacity has also been lost in the care home sector, and is not being replaced by more care in people's own homes. The loss of 60,000 beds over the past five years has been mentioned but, more importantly, in the past three years closures have exceeded new registrations, which have been flatlining for at least three years.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman has just referred to the loss of 60,000 care home places, as mentioned by the Conservative spokesman, and also referred to the report by the Select Committee on Health on delayed discharges. Has he not seen the part of the report dealing with care home places, which suggests the loss is nothing like 60,000?

Paul Burstow: I read that and the dissection of the Government's figures. The Committee was fair, and acknowledged that the figure of 19,000, which is regularly trotted out by Ministers, is probably more misleading than the figure of 60,000 cited in Laing and Buisson's report.

Simon Burns: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, whatever Ministers may say. Before he is led astray by the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), may I point out that there was not a unanimous decision by the Health Committee on the number of beds lost? The report was actually rammed through by a majority of aspiring Labour Back Benchers.

Paul Burstow: I am sure that the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is one of those aspiring Back Benchers.
	I want to focus on the figures from Laing and Buisson's report for 2001, which give the net position—the gross figures have given cause for concern. In 2001, 107 new homes, amounting to 3,800 new beds, were registered. During that period, however, 828 homes closed with the loss of 16,600 beds. There is therefore a clear downward trend in the sector, which, in some parts of the country, has contributed to the problem of delayed charge.
	The Minister told us in a statement in July that the Government aim to stimulate the care home market to get more care home beds back into the sector. They stated in their document that they want an extra 6,000 beds by 2006, the majority by 2004. I hope that the Minister can tell us how those beds are to be achieved, where they will be provided, and how the barriers posed by the development value of land will be overcome, given the investment costs and the risks involved, and given the fact that the rate of fees has still not gone up sufficiently to bring new players into the market. Why would anyone come into a market where the fee rates are unsustainably low? Work by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation clearly shows a shortfall in the resources going into the sector.

Howard Stoate: The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way yet again. He is exercised by the number of care beds in the system, and of course that is important, but is he aware of a recent national audit commissioned by the NHS executive, which found that 17 per cent. of elderly people living in nursing homes no longer needed nursing home care at all? Surely it is more important to make sure that the right people are in the right homes than to worry about the absolute number of beds, given that 17 per cent. of elderly people were apparently in the wrong place.

Paul Burstow: The hon. Gentleman makes a self-evident but nevertheless valuable point. I am not arguing that care homes are good and anything else is irrelevant but that there is a fundamental problem of capacity, not just in care home places but in home care places. We need more investment upstream to ensure that we can postpone or prevent the onset of the disability and illness that result in admissions in the first place. That ought to be a key priority for investment, but I fear that it will be denied because of the penalties.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) has drawn my attention to figures produced in Surrey. I understand that 225 people are experiencing delayed discharge from hospitals in the county, and 120 of them are believed to be the responsibility of the county. Of those 120, 30 are funded but no placement is available because of care home closures and the lack of capacity that I have described, and the other 90 are unfunded.
	From next April, the building capacity grant about which the Government have spoken a great deal, and which has been paid for the past one and a half years, comes to an end. That grant has been used to provide ongoing services, new care packages, the fees paid to care homes and for other purposes. Those are ongoing commitments that arise from a specific grant, and in future years they will have to be funded out of the 6 per cent. real-terms growth. However, the funding commitments that councils have already made will leave little of that new money available for new investment in new services.
	I shall give an example from Kent county council, which received £2.12 million through that grant in 2001–02. In a full year, the council believes that the cost of its investments amounts to £6.5 million, but in 2002–03 its grant for building capacity was £4.7 million—a gap of £2 million. The gap continues to grow because the people for whom the council is providing services continue to need those services. Why will not the Minister confirm that the penalties system is simply designed to give the Treasury its pound of flesh for giving extra money to social services in the Budget this year? Even that extra money, welcome though it is, leaves social services behind the curve in terms of meeting demand and reducing rationing in the care system.
	During the Select Committee hearings on delayed discharge, officials told the Committee that dementia
	Xis a principal cause of delayed discharge because of the complexity that having dementia plus a physical illness produces in terms of developing a good discharge plan."
	and that the latest figures
	Xsuggest that about 70 per cent. of people in nursing homes, not EMI homes but nursing homes, have a level of cognitive impairment that affects their mental function."
	There is not enough provision in this country, whether in people's own homes or in care homes, to provide a decent standard of care to people with dementia, and nothing that I have heard today suggests that that is to be addressed in the near future. In the national service framework for older people, the targets that have been set for dementia care do not require anything to be done until 2004.
	The Bill undermines partnership arrangements. It is a recipe for conflict. As the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) said, it is wrong to blame social services as though delayed discharge were their sole responsibility. The Bill turns patients into commodities labelled as bringing in or losing money, depending on one's point of view. The wording of the Bill sounds like a fed-up parent mediating between two scrapping children. It is not surprising that the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Social Services oppose the Bill, but it might be surprising that the NHS Confederation does. Those are the managers who will have to live with the consequences of the Bill that the Government are trying to foist upon them.
	Why do not the Government instead take forward the ideas suggested by the NHS Confederation for joint local protocols and building on existing partnerships? The Government say that they will aid partnership through the Bill, but it is a strange sort of partnership where one partner is given a stick with which to beat the other. That sounds more like domestic violence than relationship building.
	The Bill ignores the patients' and carers' perspective. All the submissions from charities representing older people and carers that I have read oppose the penalty system. The Bill as drafted makes patients the passive recipients of care, rather than active participants in their own care and recovery—

Hilton Dawson: So what does the patient stuck in NHS provision—it may be an older person or a person with a mental illness—do when, despite all the protocols and all the good intentions, nobody will help them move?

Paul Burstow: Under the Bill, such people will not have access to advocacy services to help them with their discharge and they will not even be asked, because the Bill does not address their right to give consent to be discharged. It does not even address whether the carer should be consulted. Such considerations are absent from the Bill. We have the vague promise that the discharge workbook, which the Government have been promising for two years to update, will be updated. The hon. Gentleman should address his question to Ministers, not to me.
	Why does the Bill make no provision for patient consent or for consulting carers? I hope that we can persuade the Government to do that in Committee. As Carers UK has documented in its report, XYou can take him home now", 77 per cent. of carers said that they were not given a choice about taking on a caring responsibility. Carers UK also found that emergency readmissions had increased from 19 to 43 per cent. among the carers surveyed, and carers increasingly saw early discharge as the reason. Emergency readmissions have been increasing. The latest figures available show that 122,357 people experienced emergency readmissions, which is an 11 per cent. rise in two years. In its representations, the Royal College of Nursing points out that that is symptomatic of inappropriate discharges.
	In the NHS plan, we were told that there would be an equivalent penalty system for emergency readmissions. What we have heard today is a watering-down of that, so there is no equivalence between emergency readmissions and delayed discharge. Instead, they are to be linked to star ratings and nothing else.

Andrew Murrison: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Burstow: I must make progress, so I will continue, if I may.
	Standard 2 of the national service framework states that older people should receive care that meets their needs as individuals, and that the role of the NHS and social services departments is to enable people to make choices about their own care. The penalties will not facilitate that. Health care should be driven by the needs of patients, but the Bill puts tick-boxes and spreadsheets first. Ministerial obsession with delayed discharge is distorting priorities. Penalties to incentivise one part of the system will have knock-on effects.
	What happens to the elderly person in their own home who is waiting for an assessment? What happens to their care? The Bill means that social services departments will be forced to prioritise the person in a hospital bed ahead of the person in their own home—a case of them being out of sight and out of mind, and certainly not being a priority when it comes to avoiding penalties. The message that the Bill sends to the House and the country is that the Government are setting up a system that creates perverse incentives where the only way in which some people can get appropriate care and ensure that they are fast-tracked is through hospital admission.

Simon Burns: The hon. Gentleman estimated that the cost to local authorities of the provisions on fines would be approximately £50 million. What mathematical formula did he use to arrive at that figure?

Paul Burstow: That is a very fair question. Indeed, we will be asking some questions about how the Secretary of State arrived at the £100 million figure that was mentioned today, which is very interesting and double the Liberal Democrats' estimate. We decided to adopt a conservative approach. The basis of the calculation was to use the most recently available delayed discharge figures and apply the rates differentially, based on £120 for London and the south-east and £100 everywhere else. We applied those levels to the figures that are provided on a regional basis, and that is how we produced our estimate. It is interesting that the Government's estimate is now twice as large. Perhaps that shows that they have figures that they have not yet made available that should be brought into the public domain.

Simon Burns: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Paul Burstow: The hon. Gentleman asked his question and had his answer, so he cannot really expect me to give way again.
	The Bill is fatally flawed and will create a blame game between the national health service and social services. It will distort priorities, leave people waiting still longer in their homes to get the care that they need and result in patients and carers being left out of the equation. Delayed discharges are a symptom of chronic under-investment not only by this Government, but over decades, and of the rationing of care. The Bill does nothing to address those underlying problems; if anything, it will make them worse. That is why the Liberal Democrats will vote against it.

David Hinchliffe: When we debate a Bill on Second Reading, we basically debate its principles. I fundamentally disagree with the principles of this Bill, which I think is flawed and will ultimately prove damaging to many positive policies that the Government have promoted.
	My hon. Friends on the Front Bench deserve congratulation on many of the initiatives that they have developed, such as joint working, community care, the flexibilities in the Health Act 1999, limited pooling of budgets and care trusts. They have introduced a range of initiatives that have genuinely improved joint working locally, as the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said. However, I fear that the Bill is taking us in the other direction. I welcome the Government's increase in funding for local authority social services, but it is a belated recognition of the serious difficulties that many local councillors face.
	The Select Committee on Health considered the figures for 2001–02 in its recent public expenditure inquiry. It is interesting to compare the real-terms growth of the national health service, at 9.4 per cent., with that of social services, which is 1.3 per cent. We are making assumptions about the Bill on the basis of the experience in that year and previous ones when that huge discrepancy existed in the funding of those two areas. An extra £100 million has been promised by the Secretary of State—it will be taken from health funding to go into social services—but the Health Committee estimated in its public expenditure inquiry, on the basis of the Government's figures, that local authorities are already spending £200 million more than their budget on social services in 2001–02. That puts his £100 million figure into context. Some 10 per cent. of English local authorities are spending more than their standard spending assessment levels.
	It is fair to say that we have treated social services as a poor relation—a term that was used by the Secretary of State. We are now putting the boot into that poor relation and we need to think the matter through very carefully. As my right hon. Friend made his speech, one of my hon. Friends asked me, XWho thought this one up?" In trying to work out some of the measures in the Queen's Speech whose logic I cannot understand, having believed in Labour party health policy for my whole adult life, I have concluded that some adviser or civil servant has been rooting around in the cellars of Richmond house and found in a file some dusty papers that were prepared for a Tory Secretary of State 20-odd years ago. That is the only conclusion that I can draw on the logic of foundation hospitals.
	The supposed logic behind the Bill is based on thinking that is completely outdated, because it is rooted in the social services environment of at least 20 years ago, when social services were direct providers of care and could offer care home places and accommodation under part III of the National Assistance Act 1948. I worked in social services for many years in the 1970s. I went to hospitals, saw patients who were deemed fit for discharge, assessed their suitability under part III, and could then arrange a direct placement under those provisions. That is no longer the case. The previous regime rapidly got rid of local authority direct care provision, and in answer to the Health Committee, the Government now describe the role of local authority social services as managing the private care market. The arena is now fundamentally different from the one in which I worked 20 years ago, when the thinking behind the Bill emerged.
	I am concerned about being told that we are considering practice in Sweden. I have always had a great interest in Scandinavian social policy, as I think that Scandinavia is light years ahead of the UK, having been there a number of times. I also found out recently that the origins of the Hinchliffe family are Norse, so perhaps I am genetically programmed towards Scandinavian social policy. However, I know enough about Sweden—indeed, I shall be there on Sunday evening with one or two of my hon. Friends—to know that its health and social care system is fundamentally different. As other hon. Members have mentioned, the Swedish system is better resourced and Sweden has higher taxes and better services. There is also far less reliance on the private market, much greater direct provision and different charging regimes. We are making the same mistake that Tory Front Benchers have made on several occasions—that of going to Timbuktu, plucking out an obscure policy and trying to apply it to the UK. That is a ludicrous thing to do because the systems are fundamentally different.
	Reference has been made to the Health Committee's recent inquiry into delayed discharges. I should like to quote from some of the evidence that we heard. Mike Leadbetter, the former president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said that the measure was Xa perverse incentive" and added:
	Xwhen you look further in Sweden, there is still the exact same number of delayed discharges in Sweden per population as there is in England."
	Dr. Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said:
	Xpeople do not believe it is an effective incentive and that in places which have worked hard to have good relationships it could bring contesting back rather than partnership . . . It could be counterproductive."
	Dr. Chris James of the NHS Alliance, speaking from a primary care viewpoint, said:
	XIf health fining social services is the Department's answer to facilitating partnership working, then we have a long way to go."
	Those are the people who will be doing the jobs, and John Ransford from the Local Government Association agreed with all those points. We got a clear thumbs down. My recollection is that we did not hear any support for the Bill apart from that of the Department of Health. Indeed, the support expressed by some of the officials whom we interviewed was muted, as they could envisage some of the likely problems.
	As I indicated in my intervention on the Secretary of State, my concern is that many factors outside the control of social services result in delayed discharges. For example, why do we not fine home nurses for failure to arrange home nursing packages because that sometimes results in delayed discharges? To my knowledge, that is a factor. What about ambulance service failures? I have come across cases in which people cannot get transport to enable them to leave hospital, especially if they have to travel some distance. What about the failure of housing authorities to arrange appropriate accommodation for people who can no longer go back to their homes because they need ground-floor accommodation or some form of specialised sheltered housing? What about resistance from relatives? I have encountered cases in which relatives have said, XNo, she's not coming out, because in our view she's not fit to do so." What should we do in such circumstances—fine the relatives? The Government do not seem to have considered that question.

Hilton Dawson: Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Hinchliffe: No, because my time is limited. I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend's position on this matter, as he knows, although I have a lot of respect for him on many other issues.
	What about choice? People may not want one care home. We have choice on one hand but contradiction at the heart of the measure. What about a private company's delay in supplying equipment required to enable someone to leave hospital and be at home? Do we fine the private company the costs of the patient's remaining in hospital?
	What about delays caused by the national health service's failure to admit people from social services establishments? Admitting them would create vacancies for people who want to leave hospital. I have come across that problem in what little remains of our part III accommodation. We cannot get people out because we cannot get people in. It is ludicrous to concentrate on one small part to resolve a big problem.
	The Bill has not been thought through. Some of its provisions are vague. As has been said, the disputes procedure under the strategic health authority is not objective. Why should the strategic health authority, which is clearly in one camp, referee? It is not neutral, so there is no objectivity.
	What about the period for social services assessment that regulations will establish? A set period for an assessment does not take account of the huge differences in the ability of social services departments in different parts of the country to recruit staff. Some London boroughs are desperately short of social services staff. Surely we must take that into account.

Michael Jabez Foster: Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Hinchliffe: No, I am about to conclude. There is one solution.

Kevin Hughes: Do nothing.

David Hinchliffe: No. I can provide a solution. I am a moderniser and a radical. We should be bold and have common budgets. We should get rid of the boundaries between health and social care. One common budget is the way forward.

George Young: The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) was the fifth speaker in the debate. So far, only the Secretary of State's speech has supported the principles of the Bill. The score is therefore 4-1; it will be 5-1 when I sit down.
	In nearly 30 years in the House, I have seen many Bills. In a competitive field, the Bill that we are considering is one of the worst. It is divisive and mean-spirited and has no place in social care in the 21st century. It will poison the atmosphere between the two key organisations that should engage in a spirit of partnership to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Instead of joint incentives to co-operate, there will be a unilateral power to fine. At a stroke, the Bill destroys much of the language of seamless government, pooled decision making, joint budgets and integrated teams.
	As the hon. Member for Wakefield said, even those who work for the NHS—the supposed beneficiary of the scheme—do not support the Bill. The NHS Confederation described it as a retrograde step. The Royal College of Nursing
	Xremains unconvinced that charging Social Services for delayed discharges from hospitals will lead to better discharge planning."
	Scarce funds that were voted for the care of elderly people will disappear into the maw of the NHS, possibly to be spent on other groups.
	There will be yet more bureaucracy in a system that is buckling at the knees under paperwork. There will be perverse consequences as people find ways through and around the new rules. For example, care home providers may exert further pressure and increase prices when they know that the authority faces the threat of a fine, thereby diminishing the amount of care that can be bought.
	We heard from one doctor today and another in the debate on the Queen's Speech what GPs will do. Those whose patients need access to a care home will have an incentive to admit them first to a hospital so that they reach the front of the queue. Social services departments will cut some of their preventive work to protect their budget from the fines for which the Bill provides, which will make elderly people more likely to end up in hospital.
	The proposals might be tenable in an atmosphere where relationships had broken down, people were not working together and there was a refusal to co-operate. The previous Conservative Government were driven to introduce rate capping when the relationship between parts of local government and central Government had broken down. Nobody who follows health and social care matters could begin to argue that such an atmosphere prevails between health and social services. We simply have not reached that stage.
	There is a temptation to consider the Bill from the viewpoint of the NHS or from that of social services departments, but the right place to start is the viewpoint of the client, customer or patient. He or she wants an overall package of reform or investment that supports independence at home when possible, and in residential or nursing care when it is not. Of course it is wrong for elderly people to stay in hospital for longer than necessary. They lose the living skills that they had before admission and they become exposed to hospital-acquired infection. There is therefore no dispute about objectives.
	The reimbursement system, however, will place the patient and the carer in an untenable and often stressful position. Patients and the carers, who may already be distressed and disoriented, will become pawns in a professionally combative and hostile environment.
	Patients want a continuum of care from a variety of institutions, provided in a spirit of partnership. They want the people on whom they depend to work together and not against each other. The sole focus on delayed discharge, which is one stage in the spectrum of care, will inhibit efforts to build on services that prevent hospital admissions and investment in longer-term solutions. It will not contribute to building up capacity in the care sector. The client will feel the tensions that the regime creates.
	The regime that we are debating highlights publicly the contrast between Government rhetoric about the rights of carers and person-centred care and the lack of individual protection that will result from the proposals. Kevin Terry of Age Concern expressed that well on 14 November. He said:
	XThe proposals for reimbursement are ill-conceived and, we believe, impractical."
	The proposal is one sided; only one partner will be fined. When the NHS fails to admit a patient for a hip replacement or other operation on a pre-determined date, it faces no fine, although the delay may impose financial costs on others. I recently received a letter from my NHS trust. An image intensifier had broken down and a constituent was consequently unable to receive treatment for back pain. The chief executive wrote:
	XThe piece of equipment . . . costs £100,000. A bid has been submitted to fund a replacement . . . a decision will not be known until later in the year . . . I will ensure you are kept informed as to when we hope to be able to progress with your treatment."
	My constituent and everyone else will not be treated until the local trust gets around to buying another intensifier. There are no penalties for the failure of the NHS to provide the quality of care that it should.
	The explanatory notes give a further example of one-sidedness. Paragraph 31 states:
	XIf for some reason the patient is not discharged at this point, then the social services authority is not liable to make any further payment, as it is not responsible for any further delay."
	That is fair. However, if the social services department has reserved and paid for a bed in a home and the NHS fails to discharge the patient, the former will be out of pocket but receive no reimbursement from the latter.
	As several speakers have pointed out, one key assumption underpins the Bill: a delayed discharge is the fault of social services. Many delays are caused by other factors such as self-funders awaiting the home of their choice, lack of community health services or a transfer to a specialist service in the NHS. The fault may lie with the housing department rather than the social services department. In many counties that have a two-tier authority, the housing authority is often at fault but the social services department will take the hit.
	As the hon. Member for Wakefield said, the social services department is the under-resourced partner in the equation. It has not received the same increases as the NHS. Let us consider the extra resources that the Secretary of State mentioned. What the Chancellor has given through the comprehensive spending review the Deputy Prime Minister will remove through the redistribution of grant. Many counties have been promised the same grant in cash terms for next year as they received last year. That is no basis for further investment in education and social services.
	In the south-east, despite all the investment that the Government mentioned in rehabilitation and community services and the good working relationship between the two departments, the overriding reason for delayed transfers is simply capacity. The problem has been exacerbated by inadequate funding in an environment of increasing demand for services for older people. Simply fining social services will not address the core problem. If the Government want faster progress, as I believe they do, the Department of Health ought to be giving positive assistance to Hampshire county council and other councils that want to expand the capacity of their nursing home sectors.
	We need a holistic approach with incentives, not a narrow approach with fines. I am amazed that Labour Members who have sat on local authorities and who are close to these issues are letting their Government get away with this. If the Conservatives had introduced this measure, they would have walked all over us, complaining about internal markets and all the rest, yet they are not stopping their Government. I genuinely believe that this is a mistake, and I urge the Government, even at this late stage, to think again.

Joan Humble: I agree with the many Members who have said that we can all applaud the aims of the Bill. No one wants to see elderly people unnecessarily delayed in hospital. Elderly people deserve to be cared for in the most appropriate setting, and we need to examine ways of ensuring that that is provided.
	One of the other aims of the Bill is to establish better communication between health and social services departments. Of course that should happen; these are the two agencies that have responsibility for looking after the very vulnerable people in our communities. If I have a concern, however, it is about the manner in which the Bill sets about achieving those two aims. I am raising my concerns not from the point of view of the social services departments in my constituency, which could be subjected to substantial fines; in fact, quite the opposite. I cross my fingers when I say this, but my local hospital does not have a problem with delayed discharges.
	I am always extremely sceptical about statistics, especially those relating to health and social services. I was shocked and amazed, last year, to see that my hon. Friend the Minister had said, in response to a written answer, that north-west Lancashire had a 10.6 per cent. delayed discharge rate, and that that compared with 4.2 per cent. in south Lancashire and 0.2 per cent. in east Lancashire. I wrote to the then chair of North West Lancashire health authority and received a reply that can be described only as a confusing analysis of how the statistics are arrived at. She wrote:
	XThe figure of 10.6 % is a plan figure which is provided by the Authority's 2000/2001 Service and Financial Framework."
	She went on to describe how the figures were arrived at, but ended by saying:
	XI am pleased to be able to reassure you that actual performance during the first two quarters of the 2000/2001 financial year is considerably below the plan figure in the Service and Financial Framework. Quarter One showed delayed discharges running at 8.9 %, whilst in Quarter Two this number fell to 4.6 %."
	Anyone looking at the original figure, however, would have thought that Lancashire had a problem. It clearly did not have a problem, and I knew that.
	As well as writing to the health authority, I wrote to Lancashire county council's social services department and to Blackpool social services. They both wrote back to say that they did not have a problem, and that they were working well with the health authority and with the hospital. They commented, however, that the picture behind the delays that did occur was not a simple one. The reasons for delayed discharges included non-availability of a specialist service at a particular time—for example, assessments or continuing therapy from health staff such as occupational therapists, who are employed by the health authority in Lancashire, or physiotherapists. In some instances, delayed discharges were also caused by a place not being immediately available in a patient's choice of residential or nursing home.
	An analysis of the figures for delayed discharges shows that about 50 per cent. of them were due to a patient's choice of residential or nursing home not having a vacancy. I say that in the context of there not being a problem of availability of nursing home and care home beds in Lancashire; we have an over-provision. Patients are therefore waiting in hospital until a vacancy arises in their preferred home. That raises concerns for me about the choice directive. What will happen to patients in hospital who are saying, XI am ready to move, but I want to go to that home down the road, and no other." How will the choice directive be applied? How will that bed become unblocked? How will the person be moved? I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will address the issue of consultation with patients and carers in this context. For example, if an individual had to make an interim move, they should be fully consulted and offered a reassurance that, should a vacancy arise in the home of their choice, they would be considered for it.
	I carried out my inquiries a year ago, so I thought that I should also look at some more up-to-date figures to find out what is happening now. I contacted Blackpool primary care trust to find out the current position. Of the 163 delays recorded between 5 August and 17 November 2002, only 16—9.8 per cent.—were attributable to social services departments. If those delays attributable to patient or carer choice are removed from the statistics, the actual figure falls to 5.5 per cent. So social services cannot be blamed for the number of delayed discharges. The blame—if blame can be ascribed—lies either with the health authority or with the patients and their carers. In Lancashire last week, there were 27 cases of delayed discharge. Of those, 17 people were awaiting practical or other arrangements beyond the control of Lancashire social services. Those 17 people included five who were awaiting arrangements to be made by families, and, for three others, discharge from hospital was imminent at the time that the statistics were being collected. I am concerned, therefore, that social services are being blamed for this situation when, certainly in my own locality, they are not to blame.
	Exciting initiatives are being introduced locally. Lancashire social services, for example, has introduced a new scheme involving named social workers. One of the problems is that it can be difficult to manage and link the social work team in the hospital, which does the discharge assessment as part of the multi-disciplinary team, with social workers in the community. So Lancashire has introduced a system in which, if someone known to social services goes into hospital, a named social worker who knows that individual and knows their care needs follows them through the hospital process and arranges their discharge into the community—an excellent initiative that could, and should, be replicated elsewhere.
	I recognise, however, that not every part of the country is as fortunate as the Fylde coast. We have not only excellent collaboration between social services and the health service but some very good health service units, including two new NHS rehabilitation units at Rossall in Fleetwood and Kincraig in Blackpool. The Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), opened the Kincraig unit, and he will have seen the excellent work that the health staff do to help to rehabilitate elderly people and to provide the interim care to ensure that they can safely be discharged from hospital and settled in the community.
	When I speak to some of my hon. Friends, however, they tell me that the situation is not the same elsewhere. I want to make one supportive comment to my hon. Friend the Minister. I understand the importance of standardising some of the procedures, learning from good practice and ensuring that examples of good practice in discharge procedures are replicated around the country, but I ask her to allow time for that good practice to be developed. I also urge her to defer the introduction of fines, which will be counter-productive in this context and will undermine the good practice that I have seen and that I would like to see developed elsewhere.

Andrew Lansley: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble). I recall that, only recently, we lost the chief executive of Addenbrooke's NHS trust in my constituency to the Blackpool NHS trust—our loss is her gain. No doubt if she discusses the matter with him, he will describe circumstances in South Cambridgeshire regarding the availability of nursing and care home places very distinct from those that she described on the Fylde coast.
	None the less, some of the arguments continue to apply, and they speak of the necessity for the Government not to attempt to construct a theoretical national argument, but to consider practical issues as they affect localities. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) so eloquently spelled out, they must not address issues by attacking one point in the system instead of understanding the whole system.
	Essentially, I have four points to make. The first, which my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) referred to from the Front Bench, is about partnerships and it has been echoed across the House. In 1997–98, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) and I, as members of the Health Committee, considered the relationships between health and social services. We could see then the necessity of taking down the Berlin wall between the two and of building partnerships. That began to happen, particularly over winter pressures, and it has extended to become more effective. Although it has become much more effective in my constituency, the Bill is designed not only to recreate that Berlin wall, but to give those on one side of the wall the ammunition to fire at those on the other. That is wholly misplaced and the Government should simply consider the response of the social services directors, the Local Government Association, the NHS Confederation and all those who gave evidence to the Health Committee. It will become obvious that those who are managing such partnerships do not regard the proposal as at all helpful in that process.
	Secondly, on the question of uniformity, I want to make a distinctive point that I have not heard set out in detail. We might bandy around national figures on the loss of care home places, but, in practice, that loss occurs for different reasons and to a different extent in different parts of the country. The Government are fond of saying—indeed, I have heard the Prime Minister say it—that places such as South Cambridgeshire are losing some nursing and care home places because of the rise in property prices. If there is a rise in property prices that is leading to such a loss, it is happening in South Cambridgeshire as much as anywhere else in the country.
	However, we are also losing nursing home places in South Cambridgeshire because they are being converted, for example, to provide mental health places, as more money can be earned from those. We are losing availability in nursing and care home places because of the change in care standards. I shall not rerun that argument from a previous Session, but it has had an impact and it has driven care home providers out of business. It would not have done so if Cambridgeshire's authority had been in a position to provide the fees necessary to meet their costs, but, as things stand, Cambridgeshire cannot meet those costs.
	Cambridgeshire cannot even compete with authorities such as Hertfordshire. They receive the area cost adjustment, which is meant to reflect the additional cost of providing services in their area, but, in practice, those costs are exactly the same. If anything, they are, in some respects, less than those around Cambridge. Hertfordshire's response to its problems is to buy care home places in Cambridgeshire, which crowds out that possibility for Cambridgeshire social services.
	In parenthesis, I am struck by how the Government are trying to rectify some difficulties associated with social services funding. Going back three or four years, they were, for political reasons, badging money as NHS money, which then had to be given to a health authority or an NHS trust to buy nursing and care home places and bail out a social services department that could not solve the problem. That is still happening in Cambridgeshire.
	The Government have given us £2.3 million and the implication, of course, is that it can immediately purchase additional capacity. However, anybody who looks at markets will recognise that, as is true around Cambridgeshire, additional capacity simply cannot be bought if the price is below the cost of providing the service. Who will come into such a market and offer such a service?
	So, £2 million of the £2.3 million provided has enabled Cambridgeshire to raise fees and to maintain provision rather than see it decline. The money has not added capacity so much as sustained it, even at current levels. If the Government are serious about building capacity, they must think hard about how much money is required to enable that to happen in parts of the country such as Cambridgeshire. Judging from what I have seen, I am not sure that £100 million is sufficient to make a substantial difference in building capacity in all those places across the country where the fees being paid are below the cost of provision.
	If the Government are to go down that path, they must think hard about differentiating between impacts across the country. I shall not stand here and say that no local authorities are failing to meet their responsibilities. Some will be failing. Equally, however, others are performing well within the resources available to them. They are spending more than the social services standard spending assessment—that applies to almost all of them, including Cambridgeshire—and they are performing well in terms of the provision of home care packages.
	The problems of delayed discharge involve, pre-eminently, the availability of care home places and, to an extent, the exercise of patient choice. In such circumstances, it is iniquitous to impose on an authority such as Cambridgeshire an additional fine that will drive the service further and further down.
	My third point is that there is an alternative. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire said, we need a more integrated system with incentives rather than penalties, which is what Cambridgeshire is setting out to achieve. A discharge planning team is being established, which will integrate health and social services and be managed by the primary care trust.
	I like to think that we can be constructive whenever possible, so I point out that an option for the Government is to take out of the hands of the social services departments alone the question whether patients should be discharged to care homes. That should be put in the hands of a discharge planning team that is independent of social services to the extent that it can buy the place and pass the cost to the local authority if one is available. That would take from any given local authority the excuse that it cannot find a place when, in reality, one is available. Of course, that would follow evaluation.
	As I said to the Secretary of State, I am worried that a consequence of the proposal will be the undermining of patient choice. In particular, and as the Health Committee heard from Essex, local authorities are required to make urgent placements and interim placements that are far from the choice of the patients and even not necessarily what is clinically best for them.
	Patients will be damaged. I have seen that, especially when those with Alzheimer's or dementia are moved from one place to another. The physical process of transferring such patients from one set of circumstances to another and from one environment to another can do immense damage. I recall that, in some cases, patients who were moved from a ward to a nursing or care home died. The home was of perfectly good quality, but it was not in the patient's interest to be transferred.
	There is an alternative, and it involves providing some independence so that a local authority that is failing to deliver on its tasks cannot escape any financial responsibility for meeting patients' needs. If a team is working on those matters and if the NHS trust concerned and the PCT are part of that team, they have an incentive to ensure that patients are not taking up beds when they should be out of hospital. Those bodies can push, through the discharge planning team, for the transfer of patients.
	On adding to perverse incentives, due to Cambridgeshire's circumstances and the nature of my area, we know that many care home providers, good as they are and as much as they want to work with local authorities, will raise their fees if they think that my social services department will lose money—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's time is up.

Kevin Hughes: We heard from the Secretary of State that the Bill's basic aim is to prevent delayed discharges from acute hospital beds. As we know, that affects older people in particular. Other Members produced, in effect, a regurgitation of the professional whinges and excuses for not doing anything to tackle the problem—notably the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), who for some reason managed to make a 25-minute speech although he is only a Back Bencher like me. I cannot remember when we decided that there were two Opposition Front Benches.
	We are all worried about people being kept in hospital longer than necessary. No one wants to be trapped in hospital when they do not need to be there, and that applies especially to elderly people. It is well known that the vast majority of older people prefer to be in their own homes. That was demonstrated to me very clearly earlier this year, when my mother needed emergency surgery. After the operation all she wanted to do was go home, even when she was still in the intensive care unit. The care she received in hospital was first-rate, but she wanted to go home nevertheless. I am glad to say that as soon as she was able to leave she was discharged.
	My family and I remain very grateful to all the staff involved in my mother's operation and after-care at the Doncaster and Bassetlaw hospital. Had she lived in a different area, things might well have been different, as we know from some of the stories we have heard today. In Doncaster, however, social services, the primary care trusts and the Doncaster and Bassetlaw trusts operate robust arrangements to ensure that they work together to reduce delays. It is an excellent example of collaboration and co-operation between health and social care services, providing support and care for patients who do not need to be in hospital for medical reasons. Patients who require time and care to recover from illness or surgery may need intermediate care, with intensive rehabilitation support, before going home or into sheltered or residential accommodation. Some may need round-the-clock nursing care in a nursing home.
	Most people want to be able to stay in their own homes, as I have said. Health and social services have crisis intervention teams to prevent the need for admission to hospital, or to ease patients back into their homes. In many cases involving elective surgery, they start considering what needs to be done after patients come out of hospital before the patients have been admitted. That is where some authorities go wrong.
	Joint agency panels allocate residential places for those who can no longer stay at home. The overall approach is to ensure that as many of my constituents as possible are given the right health and social care support, when they need it. The key is joint working and partnership throughout the caring organisations, and commitment to securing the best for local people. There is also a joint equipment store, and occupational therapists—of whom we have heard much today—employed by the NHS can assess and order equipment without the need for social services to agree to the ordering of each item, which means that delays are minimal. The provision in the Bill on liability for delayed discharge payments will certainly concentrate the minds of those who have not already started working together to reduce delays significantly.
	For authorities such as Doncaster that have put considerable effort and resources into reducing delays, targets must not be seen to be unfair, and should take into account work already done. It would be perverse to set targets that are too high for those that have already started to act, while allowing those that have done nothing to benefit.
	According to the House of Commons Library, the rate of delayed discharge in England as a whole is about 9.5 per cent. The rate in Northern and Yorkshire region is 6.5 per cent. Doncaster's average is only about 2.4 per cent. The worst rate this year peaked at 4 per cent. in September, probably owing to the actions of local private care homes, and fell to 1.9 per cent. in October.
	All this demonstrates that where there is a will there is a way. Reducing delays have meant commitment across all services at the highest level, and proactive joint working has resulted in better outcomes for older people.
	I do not agree with the British Medical Association and some Members that the plans for charging will seriously damage relations between the NHS and local authorities. Where we have the type of joint working that I have described, there should be no need for the charges. Of course, if some turn their faces against it, the BMA and Members may well have a point.
	There are other ways of helping to reduce delayed discharge. In a recent report on the subject, the Health Committee rightly observed that telecare and telehealth systems had an increasing role to play in a modern health service, enabling people to stay in their own homes for longer. Tunstall, a locally based company seems to be at the cutting edge. For many years it has been providing telecare systems for a number of local authorities, giving a cover for 1.5 million older people throughout the country. Not only do such systems help older people to remain independent, but safe and secure in their own homes; the company is moving ahead, pioneering technology that can help to prevent hospital admission in the first place by monitoring vulnerable people at home. Following discharge the systems can monitor patients while they are at home, where they want to be. Blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, electrocardiograms, temperature and breathing rates can be monitored from centres, or even by a nurse on duty in the hospital ward. The benefits are obvious, and local authorities must start considering them.
	The Bill's overriding intention is to get people out of hospital when they do not need to be there. It may well be, as the Select Committee said, a blunt instrument, but it tackles a problem that needs to be sorted out. Perhaps some need a blunt instrument to concentrate their minds—none more than the professional whingers Members have mentioned today.
	The victims of this situation are older people, who deserve better than being stuck—trapped—in hospital unnecessarily. The victims are also those in pain who wait for a hospital bed that is blocked because no one thought about after-care before they were admitted or while they were having treatment. The Bill should put an end to local empire protection and professional elitism, and finally kill the syndrome in which everyone thinks someone else is dealing with a problem when in fact no one is doing a thing. I look forward to joining my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Lobby to support the Bill.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should explain that spokesmen for the second largest Opposition party are exempted from the time limit.

Nigel Waterson: You will doubtless forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, for not being drawn into any further comment on your ruling, which I know to be the case.
	It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes). I hope that, at the end of my speech, he will let me know whether he considers me one of the Xprofessional whingers" to whom he referred at some length.

Kevin Hughes: It sounds as if the hon. Gentleman is one already.

Nigel Waterson: Well, there you go.
	We all know when there is an intractable problem, because names and definitions keep changing. The phrase Xbed blocking" used to be used, but I am told that that is no longer very politically correct. Then Xbed blocking" became Xdelayed discharges," and now it is rather grandly called, Xdelayed transfers of care." Whatever it is called, it affects about 5,000 patients every day of each week of the year.
	In my own constituency, as in many other parts of the country, there used to be great concern about so-called winter pressures and the associated problems. However, one of this Government's achievements—if that is the right word—is the creation of an all-year-round problem, at least in Eastbourne. They have created not only a list to get into my local hospital, but a list to get out, which reached an absolute peak of 149 blocked beds in June this year. So concerned am I about the issue that I have sought regular updates on that figure for a year or more. Although it has tended to fluctuate, until recently it has tended to fluctuate upwards.
	What have this Government done? Typically, they have panicked, tabling a measure that will introduce the law of unintended consequences in spades. The proposal does not have a friend in the world, apart from the hon. Member for Doncaster, North, who seems to think that everybody else in the world is wrong and he is right. It would be difficult to point to any group, body or organisation involved in the consultation that considered the proposals a good idea—nor am I sure that the Swedes would accept fatherhood. Apart from the hon. Gentleman, nobody thinks it the right thing to do, and nobody thinks that it will work. We have heard from Labour Back-Bench Members, and we have heard other excellent contributions from Conservative Members. Basically, the Government are introducing a bed tax to get themselves out of this problem.
	I turn to the likely effect in my own area of East Sussex, and in Eastbourne in particular. The irony is that the Government are introducing the proposals in a great rush at precisely the moment when places such as Eastbourne are beginning to see the fruits of a working partnership between the health service and social services authorities. In recent times, since Conservatives took control of the county council, there have been some major steps forward in social services. Conservatives took over a waiting list of 800 people who were assessed for social services care, but who under the previous regime were not getting it. That waiting list has gone—all those people have been dealt with.
	The county council, in partnership with East Sussex Hospitals NHS trust, has actually over-achieved its bed-blocking targets. As the trust said to me in a letter of only yesterday:
	XThe SSD Delayed Transfers PIP target has been overachieved so far to try and provide a buffer zone to assist with winter planning".
	The letter continues:
	XIt is pleasing to see that the total number of Delayed Transfers of Care has reduced from the peak that it reached in June of 149 to the present level of 62."

Hilton Dawson: Say thank you.

Nigel Waterson: The hon. Gentleman says, XSay thank you," but no thanks are due to this legislation, which will actually set the two organisations at each other's throats instead of enabling them to continue to work in close partnership.
	We have already heard how the number of delayed discharges, although still too high, has fallen as a result of partnership working. Mr. David Archibald, the director of social services, wrote to me saying that
	Xthe level of cross-charging could be as high as £2.5m."
	He points out that this sum
	Xwould have to come from existing budgets to older people. This sum equates to 240 residential or nursing placements, or 800 home care packages."
	As if that were not bad enough, as we all know, social services nationally are grossly underfunded—to the tune of at least £1 billion. That figure, or rather more, is the amount by which local authorities—the great majority of them—overspend their standard spending assessment.
	We in East Sussex are told that the 6 per cent. increase over the next three years will be guaranteed, but that leaves aside the massive impact of the Government's proposal—already touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young)—to change the basis of local authority funding. In East Sussex, that could mean £44 million being taken straight out of the county council's budget in a worst-case scenario. Such a cut equates to the scrapping of nearly 2,500 elderly people's care. All this talk of a 6 per cent. increase is complete hokum, because of the massive effect—it is the financial equivalent of falling off a cliff—of such a cut in funding for authorities in the south-east such as mine.
	There is also the question of the supply of suitable beds. For eight years, our county council was run—if that is not too ambitious a word—by the Liberal Democrats. Year after year, they paid the lowest rates per week to the private sector. No wonder so many homes have closed. As we have heard, some 66,000 care places nationally have gone since this Government came to power. To make matters worse, they insisted on keeping open wholly inadequate, county council run facilities that cost a great deal more than those in the private sector. My hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) will remember responding to such debates when he was a Minister responsible for these issues. We have witnessed a run-down in basic provision. Where are these places to come from?
	There is another, fundamental issue—the question of choice—that the Minister needs to deal with in her winding-up speech. Age Concern is extremely worried about this issue. It has drawn attention to standard 2 of the national service framework for older people, which states:
	XNHS and social care services [should] treat older people as individuals and enable them to make choices about their own care."
	However, as has been pointed out several times by Members on both sides of the House, the reality is that elderly people, who are often confused and very unwell, will become a kind of commodity. They will become counters on a vast Monopoly board, being shoved backwards and forwards between authorities, with the prospect of the imposition of heavy fines if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Older people and their families deserve some say in where they are cared for and on what basis. Potentially, this ludicrous legislation carries a vast human cost. We have heard the concerns about emergency readmissions, which have already reached a record high. I suspect that they are bound to increase, as old people are shoved out of the door of their local hospital under the pressure of the Bill.
	As Age Concern said in its letter to me, the Bill's penalties and provisions
	Xtake no account (and indeed make no mention) of the rights of older people".
	For that reason, and for the others that I have set out, it is clear that in a place such as East Sussex, the Bill's effects can only be destructive—not just of the choices and needs of the older people who we all profess to be looking after, but of the so far quite successful partnership between social services and the health authorities.
	In another letter, the director of social services said that, of the current cases, 59 per cent.
	Xresulted from difficulty in making nursing and residential placements due to capacity issues in the market place."
	It is no earthly good the Government trying to make water run uphill—that is one of the Bill's effects—if the places are simply not available for the people whom we are trying to help.

Howard Stoate: I welcome this debate and the Government's determination to tackle what is, after all, a very difficult problem. On any given day, 5,000 people are awaiting discharge that has been delayed for one reason or another—a problem which is having a significant detrimental effect on acute sector NHS care, and which, like road congestion, has finally reached the point at which something must be done.
	Why are we in this situation, and what can be done about it? I have been in the health service for a long time. When I started out as a junior houseman, we worked in big Victorian hospitals with huge numbers of beds. Patients would be admitted through casualty, moved to a medical ward and then, if they were old enough, transferred to a geriatric ward or, if they showed any signs of mental instability, to a psychogeriatric ward, where they remained until the grim reaper decided that it was time to come and remove them, long after everyone else had forgotten where they were.
	That unsatisfactory situation carried on for a long time. Now we have changed the regime completely, with modern hospitals providing high-tech treatment, and therefore much shorter stays. That works well, but it means a significant increase in throughput, with people who have received their high-tech care being quickly transferred elsewhere. It also means that many patients are discharged from hospital at an earlier stage of recovery, so it is essential that the facilities are there in the community or in their home for care to continue outside the hospital.
	There is also now a much greater determination among patients to remain in their own homes as long as possible and to be transferred home after treatment as quickly as possible. Fortunately, there are now better facilities in the community to allow that to happen. When I was a junior doctor, it was difficult to set up care packages in people's homes.
	The situation is strained in Dartford. According to a paper that I received just this morning from the Dartford and Gravesham NHS trust, there are currently 47 patients awaiting transfer, which constitutes about 12 per cent. of the hospital capacity, which is only just over 400. The trust says that there are enough care beds in the locality to deal with the local population, but because of the proximity of London a third of the beds are taken by patients from London whose authorities have much higher funding levels available for such care.
	Recent changes in the inspection of care homes mean that older people with mental health problems are becoming more difficult to place. The ability of some patients to fund their care independently—they take up about a third of the available stock—also puts pressures on the beds available to social services. Six of the 14 nursing homes in the area are BUPA homes and charge more than the social service contract price, so top-ups are needed.
	Patients with mental health care needs constitute a particular problem. Of the 47 patients awaiting transfer of care, 40 per cent. are waiting for EMI—elderly mentally infirm—places, which also puts great strain on the system.

Roger Gale: As a Kent Member, I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He rightly highlighted the fact that inner-London boroughs are buying beds in Kent and blocking beds that are needed by Kent social services to move people out of Kent hospitals. Will he ask the Minister to tell us how the Bill will even begin to address that problem?

Howard Stoate: I thank the hon. Gentleman, but that is not quite the problem that I was talking about. I will come to that shortly when I refer to a constituency case.
	The paper I received this morning points out that there are alternatives to nursing home care, and I am pleased to see that the acute trust is using much more sheltered accommodation with joint social services and health care team support. A community dementia team has been set up to allow people to receive care in their own homes, and that is certainly easing some of the pressure. The trust is working very hard indeed to make such alternatives available.
	I want to talk about a constituent who was seen this morning by two of my constituency workers. He is quite a difficult case and his story highlights some of the problems. He has a rapidly evolving dementia and severe Parkinson's. I have a letter from his GP saying that he needs an EMI bed, but social services has said that it will not pay for EMI care but will pay only for nursing care and has put pressure on the GP to redesignate him accordingly. The GP has written to me in outrage, which is why I undertook to raise the case in the House.
	Social services is prepared to pay £450 a week for my constituent's care, but not the £560 required for an EMI home—there is a place available—so he has now been languishing for many months in a bed in a community care NHS unit, quite inappropriately, as he does not want to be there, his family do not want him there and the NHS clearly does not want him there. For want of a top-up of £110 a week, he is occupying a bed in an NHS facility where his condition cannot be properly treated. As his condition deteriorates and his mental health care needs become ever greater, it is increasingly obvious to those caring for him that there is a problem.
	The Bill will at least make discussions of such cases more realistic. They will take place more frequently, and we can hope for more appropriate care packages for different types of patients. However, if we introduce the reimbursement scheme by April 2003, it could cause problems and create pressure. What does the Minister think about that? Despite recent funding increases—£300 million earmarked for partnership in care last year—social services departments are still having problems with the effects of historical underfunding, so we need a period of pump priming to ensure that the capacity is in place before they face penalties. That will give them time to identify the services that they need to provide. For the proposals to work properly, we must have sufficient nursing home care beds, community facilities and home care packages in place.
	We should not forget that early discharge is also a problem. If we ensure that hospitals are not put under pressure to send patients home or on to other facilities before they are fully ready, we will reduce the risk of the merry-go-round of patients being readmitted. We must ensure that step-down facilities are in place. I am pleased that a facility will be completed in Dartford and Gravesham by 2004 providing 60 step-down intermediate community beds, which will take enormous pressure off the social services and health departments. I would like to see such projects rolled out across the country.
	We need a clear incentive for health care and social care services to work together to unblock delayed discharges, which are causing great misery for many of our constituents. At least the Government's proposals will get things moving, but they must recognise that procedures must be in place to allow the situation to improve before draconian penalties are imposed on already overstretched services.
	The proposals will contribute greatly to improvements in care, provided that they are implemented in a way that allows social services to build up capacity in a measured way to unblock the problem.

Patsy Calton: I do not believe that there is anyone in the House who does not think that elderly people should get the best possible care and a streamlined service so that they are not kept in inappropriate conditions. The issue is whether the Bill will help to achieve that. I am surprised that it has been introduced at all. On 2 July, the Minister and I served on a Standing Committee distributing grants to social services departments across the country, in order to allow them to implement measures to reduce bed blocking or delayed discharge. On the face of it, three-star local authorities were being given rather more leeway and were allowed to spend the money as they liked. Authorities with one, two or no stars had to provide detailed proposals and to spend the money on reducing delayed discharge caused by bed blocking.
	As I said at the time, the problem is that one-star local authorities sometimes have very good delayed discharged figures. In Stockport, where I used to be chair of social services, the health authority and social services did excellent work to prevent bed blocking. A parliamentary answer to question 43988 made it clear that Stockport's delayed discharge figure was already good.
	Stockport is a one-star authority with a good record in that area. I noted that the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster health authority—which covers the three-star boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster—had a 9.8 per cent. delayed discharge rate in the same period. That is five and a half times the Stockport rate. I asked at the time how authorities with other problems could spend on anything that they liked apart from delayed discharge work, whereas the place that had prioritised the issue that the Government claim to want to support was made to go through the hoops.
	I suspected that there were other anomalies to be found, but the Minister at the time did not answer the question. Less than five months ago, it was all right to allow social services departments with three stars to spend the money as they wished, even though their delayed discharge figures were comparatively high, but now the Secretary of State has apparently changed his mind. How come? Have not the extra grant payments worked? Does the Minister know? Has there been any monitoring? Why has the Secretary of State changed his mind since July?
	The Secretary of State said that the needs of the older person always came first. They did not appear to do so in July. The Bill has aroused almost universal condemnation. It uses coercion just when local authorities and health authorities are beginning to adopt best practice. It is likely to worsen and not improve the situation for patients.
	Various hon. Members have mentioned Age Concern's worries. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) quoted that organisation's view that the proposals were Xill conceived and impractical". Age Concern says that the Bill makes no reference to older people's rights, and it is especially worried about matters to do with consent and advocacy. It has stated that the proposals
	Xdo not treat older people as active participants in the provision of caring services, because they take no account (and indeed make no mention) of the rights of older people—for example, the Bill does not mention the need for consent of the patient at all stages of the process of discharge, or of the appeal rights of patients in relation to disputes between the NHS and the local authority."
	The Bill is likely to damage existing beneficial arrangements developing between health departments and social care departments. Age Concern was also worried about premature discharge and noted:
	XConcentrating on delayed discharge and imposing penalties for this one aspect will not nurture the joint working (between health and social care providers) that is happening at the moment, and could lead to premature discharge and inappropriate placement decisions."
	Age Concern was also worried that the proposals would put even greater pressure on families than exists already.
	The Royal College of Nursing's observations have been mentioned by various hon. Members. The RCN made it clear that it was keen to support efforts to improve discharge planning, but that
	Xa system that penalises one part of the care sector could threaten or diminish partnership working."
	The RCN said that fines would lead to the further stigmatisation of older people as Xproblems", and added that even the timing of consultant ward rounds could lead to delayed discharge. It also said—and I believe that this is very important—that nurses, who are very highly trained these days, should be given the authority in appropriate circumstances to arrange and allow discharge.
	Mention has also been made of Carers UK, which is concerned that core discharge procedures are likely to get worse. It stated that
	Xfrom 1999 to 2001, readmissions of the patient within two months of being discharged nearly doubled from 19 per cent. to 43 per cent."
	Therefore, when the emphasis is put on delayed and premature discharge, readmissions go up. It added that
	Xthe proportion of carers who felt early discharge was at fault rose correspondingly from 23 per cent. in 1999 to 45 per cent."
	Carers UK also said that
	X77 per cent. of carers said that they were not given a choice about taking on caring responsibilities."
	Carers are not being consulted. Carers UK said that
	Xthe proportion of carers being consulted fell from 1998 to 2001 so that nearly four out of 10 carers were not consulted."
	That is during this Government's time in office. Carers UK also said that
	Xthe proportion of carers who said their views and ideas were not taken into account rose from 36 per cent. in 1998 to 45 per cent. in 2001—nearly half of all carers providing substantial care . . . Only half of the carers were told about the sorts of care that would be needed upon discharge . . . 43 per cent. of carers said they were not given sufficient help on return home."
	The truth is that there is insufficient capacity in the community. That problem is felt not just in my constituency but right across the country. We can do all that we can to return people home, but if the care assistants and workers—and especially the trained ones—do not exist to meet their needs, the circumstances of those people will not improve. The Bill, with its half-baked and counter-productive measures, will not solve that problem.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Patsy Calton: Wait for it, I have a minute left. The NHS Confederation has also made it clear that positive incentives have an important role to play. It believes that fining could undermine existing local partnerships. It is also worried about administrative costs. Where is the money going to go? How will it be redistributed?
	As many hon. Members have said, the start date of April 2003 is too early. The Government are going to wait until 2003 to find out the results achieved by the money that has been spent this year. They should wait at least until then, and then give notice of how they intend to act.

Joan Walley: A great deal has been said already and I shall not go over it, save to note that the concern in my constituency about how we deal with community care and ensure that the resources are there when they are needed has not changed in the 15 years for which I have been a Member of this House.
	One thing that has changed is that the underfunding that may exist now is nowhere near as great as in the years of the previous Conservative Government. However, we must make sure that the legislative time available to the House—and the additional funding made available by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer—is used to the best effect. We must make sure that the provision is there when constituents need it.
	In that respect, I question whether so much time and energy should be devoted to the Bill just now. I accept that sometimes one needs to wield a bit of a stick to make people do what is needed, but the carrot-and-stick approach is also needed.
	Is my hon. Friend the Minister satisfied that the extra money that is provided for care in the community is enough? I would be a lot happier debating the Bill if we knew what the local government settlement would be and what extra money would be given to Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent social services. I accept that we have had an additional 6 per cent., which we would never have had under the Conservative Government, but we need to ensure that we are getting the extra money that will allow our social services to do what we expect them to do.

Andrew Murrison: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Joan Walley: I am sorry, I do not have time.
	On bed blocking, as of this week, there are 48 people on delayed discharge in the North Staffordshire royal infirmary. If those people were not in those beds, that acute hospital would have beds for people who are desperate to get the NHS service that they need. So I have no doubt that the Government are right in making sure that we do not spend money on highly specialised services in our acute hospitals for people who no longer need that expert specialist medical treatment. We must put all our energies into finding a solution to get those people back from hospital into their home and the community, back into intermediate care or even into the long-stay beds provided by the Combined Healthcare NHS Trust, which, itself, has patients who cannot be discharged because of the lack of appropriate community facilities.
	A constituent of mine has written to me consistently over 15 years imploring me to make sure that the Government do what is needed regarding dementia services. I have spent a great deal of time making the case to Staffordshire county council that it should give money or land to Claybourne, a specialist place for people with dementia, which is run admirably by Methodist Homes for the Aged. It is of great concern to me that hardly any of my constituents can be placed in Claybourne now that the land has been acquired and this wonderful facility has been built, open and even extended. Not as many as my constituents who should go there can go because the local social services cannot afford the cost of moving them. That means that although people in other parts of the country where social services have additional money can go to Claybourne, my constituents cannot. That is a source of genuine concern.
	Let us by all means have a Bill that will penalise local authorities that do not comply with the standard required, but let us make sure that there are minimum standards of service. Wheelchairs should be provided to the community where they are needed. Let us make sure that we have occupational therapists. Let us make sure that people are not being kept in hospital for want of £20 for a handrail. I accept that we have to ensure that social services should be fulfilling those functions but in reality that is still not happening. I would rather look at ways of postponing the Bill until such time as we can do a proper audit and be certain that what should be happening is indeed happening.
	We hear a lot about the need for modernisation, and I embrace that. The Edwards report on north Staffordshire has led to the award of extra money to oversee extra resources for care in the community and to deal with the need to transfer that funding from its traditional target of long-stay beds to care in the community. However, the implementation of the Edwards report is still not subject to full accountability. Until we have that, I feel that we cannot simply depend on a piece of legislation that will penalise and fine. If my hon. Friend can give me an assurance that the Bill will not only impose such disciplines, but ensure that the local social services are properly funded, able to respond to changes and accountable, perhaps we can look forward to making sure that our elderly people are not left at the mercy of a system in which they are sent from pillar to post and do not get the services that they need. 5.45 pm

Andrew Murrison: The Labour Front Bench is struggling somewhat for support, even from its own Back Benchers. Far be it from me to offer any comfort, but may I point out that in February this year I introduced a ten-minute Bill? I wanted to call it the bed block Bill because I thought it sounded rather catchy. Unfortunately, the private Bills office had other ideas and it was downgraded to the Waiting Time for Discharge from Hospital Bill, which did not convey quite the meaning that I wanted. As is the way with ten-minute Bills, it ran into the sand, but in April, Ministers and Mr. Wanless appeared to be thinking along somewhat similar lines and subsequently produced the Bill before us.
	I would not like to be considered a professional whinger, in the words of the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) and although I would like to be fairly positive about some of the ideas that the Government are putting forward, I will explain why I think that the devil is in the detail, why the measure is doomed to fail and why it will not be attracting my support.
	I note that the Government have consulted very widely on the Bill, which is good, and have had 270 responses. The Department of Health tells us that there was a wide spectrum of responses but did not say that there was much in the way of support for the measure from those 270 respondees. It would be interesting to hear in the winding-up speech who, among those 270, were positive about the measure. The soundings that I have taken in my constituency have been uniformly hostile.
	There has been some recent improvement in the bed-blocking figures, and we need to give due credit to all who have worked hard to achieve that, but problems remain and winter is upon us. A London consultant recently told me that patients in his ward regularly have to spend the night on a mattress on the floor. That is a damning indictment of our health service in the 21st century. Those of us with first-hand experience as patients know full well that being on a hospital ward is an unsettling experience, whether or not we have a bed. For elderly or vulnerable people, that would be a gross understatement, and the experience would not be therapeutic.
	We also know that the longer people are in hospital, the greater their chance of succumbing to hospital-acquired illness. Long stays mean unnecessary medicalisation of people's problems and the demotivation of valuable NHS staff. It is a classic lose-lose situation.
	Despite the small measures to resolve the imbalance between the social services and the NHS announced today, I believe that there is a deficit between the two sectors. That is historic and I believe that we should be supporting what might be described as the less ritzy part of care. Traditionally we support those medical specialties that produce obliging targets and outputs. They focus strongly on cardiology and surgery in general, when we should perhaps be looking more closely at areas of care that could arguably produce more in terms of health care and outcome for people for every pound spent. To that extent, I welcome the Secretary of State's announcement that he is transferring £100 million from the NHS to social services. It will be interesting to see whether that funding is sustained when the Bill comes into effect.
	Much of the devil in the detail to which I referred is contained in the explanatory notes accompanying the Bill. I was left rather puzzled as to what qualified as a qualifying hospital under the definitions in the Bill. I am not entirely sure whether Ministers know either. For example, I have previously asked Ministers what they mean by Xintermediate care" because they are often less precise than they should be. I am certainly confused about what it means in the Bill. Will an elderly person in a community hospital who is under the care of a consultant be a qualifying patient in a qualifying hospital for the purposes of the legislation?
	Although there is little mention of primary care trusts, community hospitals and GPs in the Bill, the explanatory notes on clause 4 come close to that in the reference to care of an Xinterim nature" pending fuller social services assessment. That worries me as it could mean that a patient is discharged before a fully comprehensive package is in place. A fully comprehensive package involves primary care and I am amazed that a community care Bill can so obviously neglect primary care trusts.
	Cross-charging rates are to be set by regulation. The consultation document suggested £100 a day except in London and the south-east, where the rate will be £120. That is a substantial differential and it implies that social care in the south-west is substantially less expensive than it is in the south-east. As I represent a Wiltshire constituency where we constantly make comparisons with the largesse that is heaped across the border on Hampshire, I shall be interested in any evidence that the Minister can provide to back up the assertion that social care in Wiltshire is less expensive than it is in Hampshire.
	The measure's most obvious perverse incentive hardly needs restating. As a GP, I should be far more inclined to seek admission to an acute unit if I thought that it was the best, or only, way to obtain the social care that my patient needed. That would both encourage bed blocking and make it difficult for people who were not admitted to hospital—they would be for ever at the bottom of the pile.
	A more subtle perversity occurs to me, as it may have done to other hon. Members: the relative disadvantage that would be introduced for emergency surgical and medical patients compared with those whose admission is anticipated in advance. Those potentially disadvantaged patients tend to be older and frailer than those considered well enough for elective surgery. Those who are less well would thus be disadvantaged by the Bill, because those who are well enough for elective surgery would, by definition, be relatively fit. I should be grateful if the Minister could consider that point.
	Clause 2 restates Ministers' obsession with cold surgery. In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State said that Opposition Members had an obsession with the acute sector, which seems to be the pot calling the kettle black. There is no doubt that Ministers are obsessed with cold surgery—patients undergoing elective procedures. Such patients can expect their package to be arranged well in advance of those admitted as emergencies, yet it is arguable that prompt reintroduction into the community may be of greater benefit to those who have recovered or are recovering from an acute illness, not least if they are older. I am concerned about the paradox that the least well will be disadvantaged.
	Readmission rates are rising, and hasty discharge may be one of the causes. However, it is a fallacy to suppose that that is the province of one sector or another. It is not only the shortcomings of hospitals that cause increases in readmission rates. The problems lie also in primary care and social care, so fining hospitals is plain daft. Furthermore, health care staff will resent the implication that their actions should be dictated by the possibility that their hospital might be fined.
	The regulatory impact assessment glosses over the burden that the measure is likely to place on carers—either by design or default. We must recognise that social service providers lean heavily on informal carers. Without them, our system would crumble.
	There are several cracks in the RIA. The major costs in our health care system are up front, so if capacity is increased, as the Bill is presumably designed to do, which is welcome, there will be a great increase in costs as more surgical operations are carried out. There is no indication that Ministers have fully grasped that point. I shall be interested in their comments on the greater up-front costs that will undoubtedly result from the Bill.

Paul Truswell: Before I join my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) in the Labour Back-Bench naughty corner by incurring the wrath of my equally hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes), I want to say two things. First, no one doubts the commitment of the Government Front-Bench team to addressing this often difficult and deep-seated problem. Secondly, the Government's record on investment in the NHS and social services knocks that of their predecessor into a cocked hat.
	The current situation is not, as Opposition Members try to suggest, the fault of the Labour Government. The roots of the problem go back not a few years but at least a decade. Opposition Members show their customary collective amnesia. Their hand-wringing makes me think that they must belong to the Uriah Heep appreciation society.
	I shall remind the House of the background. In the late 1980s and in the 1990s, the Conservative Government's mantra was clear: public provision bad, private provision good. We all remember how funding was skewed so that people going into independent sector accommodation commanded more resources from the then Department of Health and Social Security than those going into local authority homes. We all remember the explosion in the number of private sector residential and nursing homes. We all remember the massive loss of care beds in the NHS and the closure of local authority homes, or their transfer to trusts, voluntary sector organisations or similar creative arrangements.
	Of course that could not be sustained, so when the resources originally vested in the DHSS were transferred to cash-strapped local authorities, which were then systematically starved of cash—unless they happened to be Westminster or Wandsworth—the die was cast. The Labour Government inherited a major problem and it has developed into a crisis.
	As a solution, however, the Bill is at best premature and at worst could destabilise the care system for older people, as some Members have already pointed out. There are several key points in the case against the Bill and I base them on my observations over many years as a councillor, a chair of social services, an MP and someone whose parents will undoubtedly require care in the near future.
	The issue of choice has been referred to over and over again. Older people, or their friends, relatives or advocates, want a place in a particular home and they are reluctant to leave hospital until it is secure.
	There are funding problems. Leeds spends over £18 million more than its standard spending assessment on social services, a situation that is unlikely to change as a result of the local government finance review. The authority has not been able to pay nursing homes as much as they say they need to stay in business. About 200 beds have been lost during the past couple of years. However, following an independent report commissioned from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Leeds has increased payments by about 10 per cent. or more, which will, hopefully, check that loss of beds. Only time will tell. The 6 per cent. growth in real terms plus any further funding from the Government will not achieve an immediate improvement in that long-term funding problem. It cannot instantly ensure that a build-up to appropriate levels of community care services is achieved.
	Other Members have referred to key issues such as the recruitment of specialist staff and said that blame is shared equally among various agencies. I am not sure that blame is the right word, although we seem to have used it a lot in the debate. The Bill is premature and unhelpful.
	Capacity has been affected by the fact that some homes have closed because owners—often with an eye to shareholders—have chosen to realise a capital asset for housing or other uses.
	My fear is that, as many hon. Members have rightly said, the Bill will lead older people to be pressured, albeit subtly, to leave hospital prematurely. They may have to undergo unnecessary extra moves between hospital and their eventual place of residence. For some people, those additional moves will require the commissioning of step-down facilities in the independent sector. In Leeds, as in so many other places, there is already little surplus capacity in nursing homes, and further use of spare capacity for step-down or interim placements may exacerbate the situation.
	Leeds is trying to resolve the issue by creating the spare capacity in hospital wards that would then be transferred to a primary care trust. That capacity would not be designated as acute and, I hope, not counted against the measurements that would fall foul of the Bill. In the longer run, that resource could be decommissioned as better alternative community-based facilities were created, but that needs time, and the Bill is premature and unhelpful in that respect as well.
	The Association of Directors of Social Services has understandably expressed concern that some independent sector providers may seek to take advantage of the pressure on social services departments imposed by the Bill to increase charges.
	The penalty payments will, I understand, go to the hospital trust. As far as I am aware, there is no requirement to ring-fence that money for older people's services. The resources available for the care of older people will be absorbed into the general acute sector, thereby reversing a trend that everyone is trying to achieve. At the very least, if the Bill comes into effect, the Minister should consider ensuring that any penalties go to the PCTs, so that they can be recycled into the care of older people.
	As other hon. Members have said, hospitals may accelerate discharge procedures to put pressure on social services or reap the benefits of the Bill. Many hospital trusts—Leeds is no exception—run considerable deficits, and there is a danger that they will take advantage of any possible income flows and view them as very welcome news. Any use of interim step-down facilities will require proper medical cover and GPs may be reluctant to take on such work. I am not aware that any guidance or funding has been offered to PCTs to cover that issue.
	In Leeds, there is a very good working partnership—other hon. Members have referred to similar circumstances—and a will to ensure that patients are not detained unnecessarily in hospital. Delayed discharges run at about 2 to 4 per cent. per annum, mostly because of considerations involving choice, and I understand that that percentage compares favourably with national figures. That percentage represents 50 to 75 older people.
	There is a huge problem, and it needs big answers. The Government are already beginning to provide those answers through the extra funding that they have made available, but I hope that the Minister will not reply by saying that we are at our best when we are at our boldest, because those words were no doubt uttered by George Armstrong Custer immediately before the battle of the Little Bighorn. I cannot help but fear that the Bill—well intentioned though it is—represents perhaps the wrong battle in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Richard Taylor: I start from the same premise as most hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon: the Government are trying to tackle the problem of delayed discharges, which is exactly the right problem to tackle when we consider not only the financial implications but the quality of life of those elderly people towards the end of their days who are losing a few of their precious days in hospital. However, I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), who did not mince their words. It gives me a great deal of pleasure also not to mince my words: this is the wrong Bill doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and one cannot get away from that.
	The regulatory impact assessment, which all hon. Members have probably seen, states that there are really only two options: do nothing, or introduce a reimbursement scheme. The most obvious solution of all—looking at the whole system—has been missed, but the Health Committee has done the work on that. I should like to make four points. I think that they all come from the Health Committee report; I do not think that I have included any of my own.
	The first and most important point is to avoid inappropriate admissions. The latest figures show that about one in seven patients do not need to be admitted to hospital, and there are already ways to avoid that. Many places have multi-agency response teams—MARS teams—that GPs can call out to patients' homes to work out alternative methods of coping with them other than sending them to hospital.
	One of my daughters is a nurse-consultant in intermediate care. Her job is to go into the casualty department and medical assessment unit of a very large hospital to sort out patients' care at home, if possible.
	I must, of course, refer to hospital reconfigurations. I am delighted to hear that a Government paper is coming out, recognising that reconfigurations that take assessment centres away from the local population have to be reconsidered.
	The second crucial point from the Health Committee report is that a named person should be responsible for co-ordination of all stages of the patient's journey right from the moment of admission—before then in the case of elective admissions—and up to and beyond discharge. My PCT has a discharge co-ordinator who goes round all the hospitals that the trust uses. In addition to such co-ordinators, named people who are responsible for each patient would make a huge difference.
	The third point, which has been made already, is that it is absolutely crucial to consult patients and carers. They must be involved, not just as an afterthought, but right at the beginning. If discharge planning starts early, a logical conclusion can be reached. Is step-down care needed? If so, is it available? Can the patient get home? Are adaptations and other aids needed? Such planning has to start at the beginning.
	In their response to the Health Committee report, the Government agreed with most of those points, but then seemed to put them all on the back burner. They said several times that they would introduce the system of reimbursement, but, as I have said, that focuses entirely on the wrong end of the process.
	I congratulate the Government on revising the hospital discharge workbook, and I hope that the new one will come very soon and that it will produce a radical overhaul of the whole process of hospital discharge. I welcome the change agent team and the Modernisation Agency. A lot of good things are going on, but this approach is completely wrong.
	In his introductory remarks, the Secretary of State said that partnerships were the key, and several speakers have said exactly the same. I cannot see how the Government can argue that the proposal improves partnerships. It sets one side of the equation against the other. One can blame the other, and thus avoid paying. The Secretary of State says that £100 million can go from the NHS back to social services to make up for the fine, which proves to me that he has suddenly realised that the proposal is mad.
	I will conclude my remarks, as I know that many other Members wish to speak. The Bill is wrong and should be thrown out. Like the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), I have been counting speeches, and I think that the score is about 12-3. I wish that the Bill, which should be in the interest of patients throughout the country but not in the interest of political parties, could have been subjected to a free vote or decided on the number of speeches rather than a whipped vote, which, I fear, will automatically see it through.

Andy Burnham: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor). I do not know whether the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) is still keeping score, but I can tell both Members that I am about to pull a goal back. My speech will not be without observations of my own, having worked on the Health Committee report and taken a great interest in it.
	The speech of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) was high on conjecture and hypothetical situations but, other than what seems to be the Conservatives' policy of pumping money into care homes, contained no solutions to the issue of delayed discharges or bridging the divide between health and social services. If keeping care home places open is their overriding priority, they are sadly mistaken. That is no policy.
	Conservative Front Benchers are not alone in not having answers on this subject. I worked briefly in the NHS, and I lost track of the number of seminars and workshops that I attended on bridging the divide between health and social services. Many good ideas and examples of good practice were discussed, but good practice only produces incremental change. There are huge problems in this area, however, which the system has failed to put right. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) referred to the need to concentrate minds, which is absolutely right. The system is not currently working for patients and families. I do not have all the answers, but the system needs to be made to work better and more quickly for those people than it does at present.
	Opposition Members seem to be defending the current system. They seem to be saying that everything is fine as it is, but it is not good enough. We need to address that. Attacking these proposals should not be used as an excuse for saying that nothing should be done. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire referred to stress and tense situations in hospital, which are hallmarks of the current system. That is doing no good to patients or families.
	In all the discussion about structures and processes, it is easy to lose sight of some of the purposes of the Bill. There are probably two clear objectives. One is to give elderly people in particular more appropriate treatment when they need it, to get them through the system and to get them back home, which is the important point. The second is to free up hospital beds so that more patients can be treated across the NHS. That problem has bedevilled the NHS, and we must get better at bearing down on blocked bed days, as they are called. Five thousand beds are currently blocked at any one time.

Laura Moffatt: Is my hon. Friend aware that, despite all the good practice and all the hard work of many social services and acute trusts, when my acute trust began this work a year ago we had 70 delayed transfers of care and that this week we have 70 delayed transfers of care?

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When minds are focused on this problem, and people start to bear down on the bureaucratic process that exists, it is amazing how the system can be made to work better. We should all bear that in mind.
	As I said, the report found that there are 5,000 blocked bed days at any one time. It is important for hon. Members to consider the evidence that the Department gave as to why those beds are currently blocked: 22.2 per cent. are awaiting an assessment of care needs; 21.9 per cent. are awaiting a funding package to be agreed; 20.4 per cent. are awaiting a care home placement; 11.5 per cent. are awaiting further NHS care; and 6.7 per cent. are awaiting a domiciliary package of adaptations and equipment. Nobody can tell me, based on those figures, that there are not areas in which we can start to reduce delays in the system. Why are 22.2 per cent. waiting for an assessment of care needs? There must be things that can be done to bear down on that.
	The report also mentioned our visit to the United States, to which, I think, my hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) referred. On the United States system, the report clearly states:
	XWe were left in no doubt that this system"
	of financial incentives
	Xwas very effective in reducing hospital stays."
	We visited a health maintenance organisation called Tufts Health Plan, which told us something extraordinary. The day its patients go into hospital for a planned admission, the builders move into their homes to adapt them so that they can leave hospital as soon as their care is complete. None of our constituents would recognise that experience. It is an example of good planning. There is no reason why it could not be done here, but our system does not place pressure on people to make them think that they have to do that good planning and deliver better services.
	There are two reasons why the United States system works. The first is that the financial incentives are part of the process. They move people through the system and out of hospital quickly. The Bill tries to replicate part of that in our system. The second reason is that there is one budget and therefore only one person deciding how to get someone home as quickly as possible. On that matter, I bow to the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield. In some ways, I am under his spell on the Committee. The Government should give careful consideration to a single budget as a way of getting people through the system more quickly. That is the ideal. It cuts away the possibility of squabbles about who is responsible or where the fault lies. We are more likely to get people through the system quickly with one budget and one objective than with a system of financial incentives or penalties.
	It will be a shame if the Bill halts the move towards single budgets in health and social services departments. I do not want that to happen.

Hilton Dawson: I do not disagree entirely with my hon. Friend, but structural change is not the whole answer. Wherever there is a structure, there is a boundary, and other functions would be left out of a joint health and social care body. Surely it is our systems and values that are important. We must aim for the ultimate principle, which is to wrap services around the people.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend is right. People are the most important consideration. They do not mind whether the health department or the social services department provides their care. They do not care about the divides, which we have to break down. I favour a move to single pooled budgets. Having said that, the proposed system is the fall-back option. If people do not go down the collaborative route, another system has to be in place that will work for patients. It might be one or the other, but I hope that the Government will not rule out the good examples of joint working.
	I echo what the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) said about the readiness of the system to cope with the proposed changes. My local authority is a member of the special interest group of municipal authorities. We vehemently argue that we have been underfunded for years, especially in social services. One symptom of that is a severe lack of occupational therapists, which other hon. Members have mentioned. The health service and the local authority in Wigan employs occupational therapists, but the health service often takes them from the local authority, which struggles to keep them. I gather that there is a national shortage of occupational therapists and that there are 5,000 training places every year. The Government have to consider that problem if we are to achieve the ideal of getting people back home as quickly as possible.
	The system is not able to adapt homes quickly enough. There is a 10 to 13 month wait in Wigan for an assessment for a stair lift. There are many former miners and people who suffer from industrial disease in my constituency. That is a hell of a wait for a home to be made adequate. That person could easily pitch up at hospital again before the changes are made.
	Finally, will the Government consider the range of services and appropriate accommodation available in the community? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, I believe that the choices available to people are not good enough, and my great hope is that the Bill will diminish the reliance on institutional care, in both residential and nursing settings. For people who are stuck in hospital for too long and who become institutionalised, hospital care becomes a pathway to residential care when, if they had been expedited through the system, that option may not have been the most suitable.
	I should like to echo a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North: why cannot we use social services resources to put better equipment in people's homes? When the Select Committee visited West Yorkshire, we saw people doing self-testing at home and sending their results to remote centres to identify any emerging health problems that may require hospital admission. We should consider how we can concentrate resources on the point of entry to the system, rather than always thinking about how to cope with people when they need care. We should concentrate on getting to the point at which people do not need care, or, if they do, on ensuring that it is much later in life. If this system can keep people out of hospital in the first place, it can only be welcomed.

David Amess: I wholeheartedly agree with the speeches made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) and, yes, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe).
	Thank goodness I do not have to stand up and make fawning speeches about the Government, so I can wholeheartedly say that this is a lousy Bill from an absolutely rotten Government. They should be ashamed that they are introducing it in the House. Some weeks ago, the Secretary of State gave evidence to the Health Committee, and I challenged him about consultants' contracts. I asked him whether he would take on the consultants and said that, if so, he must be mad. After a lot of waffle, which we also heard in his speech this afternoon, he said that he would not, and I judged him to be sane. I am now reconsidering.
	These will be dark days for the Labour party and the Government. The economy is on the slide, and the Government will need all the friends that they can get. Having listened carefully to all the speeches today, I think that they are rapidly running out of friends among Back Benchers. The Bill is the ultimate case of buck passing, and, as we have heard, no one is in favour of it. There is a long list of people who have condemned the Bill.
	What Member would say that it is terrific to have people stuck in hospital beds when they should be returned to their own home or admitted to a residential home? Of course Members of Parliament think that it is shocking. Who wants to stay in a hospital and catch MRSA? Every Member wants to do something about bed blocking, but the Government do not seem to understand that this ridiculous Bill, which they are trying to persuade the House to accept, will not solve the problem. In fact, it will make it much worse.
	In part 2, the Secretary of State has had the cheek to take powers to allow him to remove, in circumstances set out in regulations, the power of local authorities to charge for certain community care services. That will do huge damage to local authority budgets, and authorities throughout the country are already struggling to meet the demands on them.
	The Government should have listened to the Health Committee. We all know that, sadly, the House is not quite the force that it used to be, but Select Committees certainly provide a good means of challenging the Executive. Members of the Health Committee worked hard to prepare the report. We made 37 recommendations, and went to America and Canada. If the Government had listened to our recommendations, they would not be in a mess. For instance, we said:
	XThere are real risks that perverse incentives will be created that will undermine partnerships that have taken time to develop and foster an unproductive culture of buck-passing and mutual blame between health and social care. We agree that appropriate incentives have a role to play, but we would also urge the development of positive incentives that reward good practice, rather than any precipitate and over-zealous emphasis on penalties."
	We went on:
	XWe are concerned that the focus on tackling delayed discharges, entirely laudable in itself, could lead to an intensification of pressures to discharge patients too quickly, with inadequate preparation, and in situations that could intensify the demands on their carers. This has the potential to trigger a rise in readmission rates. Premature discharge leading to readmission is clearly stressful and in many cases harmful for the patient, and is also wasteful of resources. High levels of unplanned admission are likely to be a marker for poor practice."
	As another member of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), said, the Government should have looked at our key eighth recommendation that a dedicated person look after the individual before they were admitted to hospital and while they were there. Afterwards, that person would make sure that they were given proper care and support.
	In my constituency, there is a huge number of elderly people. If you want to live longer, come to Southend, West. In February, a local resident will celebrate her 109th birthday. She lives in a bungalow on her own, and recently I had the privilege of having a cup of tea with her. She is truly remarkable, but many other people are admitted to hospital with no relatives or loved ones to support them. It is thus not just a question of dereliction of duty by social services.
	Will the Government look at the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 that I had the privilege of steering through the House? That measure would deal with bed blocking, as it tackles the important issue of fuel poverty. All hon. Members know that this winter a huge number of elderly people will be readmitted to hospital. Cold, damp homes are associated with premature mortality, physical and mental illness and impaired quality of life. They aggravate a wide range of medical conditions, increase suffering and make it harder to care for vulnerable people at home, thus adding to the burdens on the NHS. Those burdens are seen, as I have said, in growing waiting lists for admissions and bed blocking. No doubt, there will be another crisis this winter. National Energy Action believes that the Government should look carefully at recommendations that winter taskforces in primary care trusts should produce a local plan to deal with that problem, thus increasing awareness of the links between housing and health, identifying households at risk, and making referrals to fuel poverty programmes and good-quality energy advice.
	Next week, members of the Health Committee will visit Sweden and the Netherlands. Although we are looking at sexual health, I have decided that I shall make it my business to find out how the Swedish model is working. According to one director of social services, the introduction of a programme of penalties in Sweden resulted in a two-year build-up, after which time all the accommodation was made available. It is crazy and disastrous that residential and nursing homes throughout the country are closing because of the onerous duties placed upon them by the Care Standards Act 2000.
	This is a rotten Bill and I plead with the Government at the eleventh hour to drop it.

Simon Burns: I am not sure whether the Minister needs reminding of the saying that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. If one considers the majority of responses to the Bill, it is clear that it is an orphan. The overwhelming view of the Bill has been unfavourable, to say the least. That Labour stalwart, Sir Jeremy Beecham, the chairman of the Local Government Association, has urged Ministers to abandon the Bill. The NHS Confederation and the Association of Directors of Social Services have both condemned the proposals in the Bill. Age Concern has described the Bill as Xill-conceived and impractical".
	The British Medical Association has voiced its opposition. Help the Aged is opposed to the imposition of fines, and says that the Government should concentrate their efforts on securing the long-term future of social services. Kent county council, acting as a spokesperson for a group of county councils that will be adversely affected, called the proposals Xgravely flawed".
	During the debate, speaker after speaker has condemned the proposals, particularly in part 1. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) on an elegant and lucid speech in which he highlighted the fundamental flaws in the Government's approach, as outlined in part 1. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), who presented a compelling argument about the impact that the Bill will have on partnerships. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) highlighted the problems in his constituency, the way in which the NHS and local authorities have been working closely together, and the damage that the Bill will do to that relationship. Those sentiments were echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison). My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), in a typically robust speech, left us in no doubt of his opposition to the Bill.
	It is not solely Conservative Members who are opposed to the Bill. I know that the House always listens carefully and with respect to the views of the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), the Chairman of the Health Committee, who in the course of his comments made it plain that he was against part 1 and thought that it was wrong. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson), who, to be fair, said that she would not vote against the Bill, was critical of certain aspects of it, as was the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble), who urged the postponement of the fines. She was chairman of social services in Lancashire before coming to the House.
	The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) was lukewarm in her support. Some of the comments of the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) may have been unpalatable to me, but the thrust of his powerful message was that the Government had got it wrong in part 1. Looking round the Chamber during the speech of the Secretary of State, it was interesting to see a number of other hon. Members expressing their support through their body language and their sedentary comments. I caution them about being over-enthusiastic in support of the Bill.
	I caution in particular the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford). If I were her, I would check what her social services department thinks of the Bill. During the afternoon, my office had an opportunity to speak to the director of social services of Kirklees council who, among other things, made three comments on the Bill: first, that it is not the right way to tackle the problem; secondly, that it is totally wrong and not good for partnership work; and thirdly, that it will rebuild a Berlin wall between health and social services. I understand that hon. Members in the Kirklees local authority area are meeting the social services department tomorrow to discuss the implications of the Bill. The hon. Lady might be interested to hear the department's views in that meeting.

Kali Mountford: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am surprised but not alarmed about his telephone call, despite his office having said merely that it was from the House of Commons; the fact that it was his office had to be wheedled out of it. I called the department at 4.30 today, after his call had been made, and it said that it was perfectly happy with the Bill and that working relationships and partnerships were the way forward, and commended such arrangements to other authorities as the best way of making the Bill work.

Simon Burns: I am grateful for that contribution, but I would be fascinated to know to whom the hon. Lady spoke in the social services department. If she spoke to the director of social services, Mr. Philip Cotterill, it would seem most extraordinary that his views on the Bill should have so radically changed in the course of a maximum of 90 minutes.
	The role of the Health Committee is very interesting. Many hon. Members have mentioned the report that was published in July, and it has been interesting to hear in the debate the hon. Members from the governing party who were members of the Committee. The hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) gave us the benefit of an interesting speech in which he reassured my hon. Friends that he was going to redress the balance by speaking in support of the Government's proposals after an overwhelming number of Labour MPs had spoken in opposition to them. He is perfectly entitled to take that position and I do not criticise him for doing so, but I wonder—I shall leave this in the air merely as a matter of wondering—how he squares the support that he expressed for the fining system set out in part 1 with recommendation 33 in the Committee's report. I remember the discussions that we had in formulating the report, so I wonder how he squares his undying support for what the Secretary of State is doing with two parts of that recommendation, which states:
	XThere are real risks that perverse incentives"—
	that is, fines—
	Xwill be created that will undermine partnerships that have taken time to develop, and foster an unproductive culture of buck passing and mutual blame between health and social care."
	The recommendation goes on to state:
	Xwe would also urge the development of positive incentives"—
	as opposed to fines—
	Xthat reward good practice, rather than any precipitate and over-zealous emphasis on penalties."
	Again, that is very different from what the Government are now recommending.

Hilton Dawson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Simon Burns: No, because there is not much time.
	The greatest flaw in the legislation is that, ironically, it will not achieve the aims that it seeks to promote. Simplistically to believe that the panacea for solving problems of delayed discharge is fining social services departments demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the problem.
	Most reasonable people would endorse the policy intention and goal of delivering improvements to the system to ensure better, more timely and safe discharge from hospital, but to hijack the Swedish system, completely misunderstand it and simply produce a negative policy of imposing fines on social services departments is a missed opportunity. I tell the Secretary of State that that approach is ultimately bound to fail. It is beyond argument that for vulnerable people, and older people in particular, to remain in hospital longer than necessary is potentially a danger to health and is grossly unfair and an utter waste of NHS resources, but to pray in aid the Swedish system without understanding the differences and the fact that it is now having to be amended to pick up on the unintended problems that it has created is not the best way to proceed.
	The Government have failed to accept the inherent crisis in care for the elderly. Without redressing the problem of the loss of 60,000 beds, the closure of 2,000 homes and the decrease in the number of households that receive domiciliary care by almost 100,000, delayed discharge cannot be tackled satisfactorily.
	The burden of prospective fines is hanging over social services departments like the sword of Damocles. It is an ominous and current threat. Regardless of the success of individual departments in reaching their specific targets for reducing delayed discharge, fines are to be distributed with zest. There has been much speculation recently about the financial burden that the fines will place on local authorities. Many authorities have expressed their grave anxiety about the detrimental effect of fines on them from next year.
	The Liberal Democrats, the arbiters of financial prudence since the Chancellor finally divorced Prudence, claim that the estimated national cost is £50 million. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) kindly explained in an intervention that he had concocted those figures on the back of an envelope. Although it grieves me to tell him, their sums are wrong. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, who use a piece of paper and the back of a cigarette packet with a clipboard thrown in to calculate a combination or two of figures before announcing a figure that they believe to be newsworthy, I have spent my time more scientifically and productively. In the past week, I have canvassed as many local authorities with social services departments as possible.
	The figures that I was given are significantly higher than those that the hon. Gentleman produced at the beginning of the week. London alone estimates a penalty figure of approximately £25 million. That is in line with the figures that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) provided during the debate on the Queen's Speech when he opposed the proposals and claimed that they would cost Ealing, North about £2.2 million.
	Let us consider the shire counties. Their estimates were £2 million for Buckinghamshire; £6 million to £7 million for Surrey; £1.5 million for Cambridgeshire; £3.9 million for my county of Essex; £2.5 million for East Sussex; and £8 million to £10 million for Hampshire.
	In order not to leave anyone out, I also spoke to social services departments in the Health Ministers' constituencies. In case they do not already know, I shall enlighten them about the way in which the proposals will affect them. Worcestershire, which covers the constituency of the hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), believes that the financial burden will be approximately £1.8 million. The local authority of the right hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) estimates it at £2.74 million. The local authority of the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears) believes that the cost will be around £1 million, and the local authority of the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) estimates the financial burden as between £500,000 and £750,000.
	While I enlighten Ministers about the way in which their perverse proposals will affect their areas, it would be unfair if I did not draw attention to the financial burden that the proposals will place on the local authority that covers the Prime Minister's constituency. It has been estimated as approximately £1.4 million.
	Just over half the local authorities that I managed to speak to reckoned that the financial burden would be £76 million. Let us project that upwards to the total: the Local Government Association figures estimate a cost of about £180 million, which also highlights the impact statement figures. That is probably about right. What does that mean? The Secretary of State suggests that he will rob Peter to pay Paul and shift £100 million from the Department of Health to the Department for Work and Pensions. That is ludicrous.
	The policy should be abandoned before it does more damage. More help should be given to try to remove positively the problem of delayed discharge rather than introducing some crackpot and punitive scheme that almost nobody likes except the most diehard new Labour stalwarts. It is absolutely crazy and it will cause grave problems for the working and further development of partnerships. It will also do nothing to deal with the problems of admissions and readmissions to hospitals. It will distort operational priorities, create pressure for premature discharges, and discourage social service co-operation with care planning procedures in hospital settings.
	For those reasons, I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to join me in the Division Lobby tonight to vote an emphatic no to a policy and a Bill that are woolly and wrong-headed and that are bound, in the end, to fail, but not before they have done tremendous damage to what has been achieved in the working partnerships between health and social services. 6.45 pm

Jacqui Smith: We have had a good debate today. I certainly welcome the constructive suggestions made by some hon. Members about what more we can do to ensure that our older people get the right care at the right time and in the right place. Unfortunately, however, I cannot say the same about the contributions from the Opposition Front Bench. The hon. Members for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) and for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) failed noticeably to focus on the needs of older people, had no practical suggestions for improvement, and seemed to see their sole role as the champions of local government. I have to say that that is a bit rich, coming from the people who brought us the poll tax, rate-capping and a stream of central controls on local councils, but who now feign to believe in freedoms for local government.
	Let us return to the real issue in the Bill. The existing system means that 5,000 people are currently stuck in hospital when they would be better served outside. This Government's investments in community alternatives and better working between social services and health have made all the difference. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), in a strident contribution, said that all hon. Members wanted to tackle delayed discharge, but when his party left government, delayed discharges stood at around 6,985. By September 2002, that figure had been reduced by more than one third. That is because social services have been able to build up alternatives to hospital, more care homes have been commissioned, and there are higher fees, more home care provision, and more community equipment.
	The way that we have achieved this, through ring-fenced funding and top-down central monitoring, is not sustainable. Extra money has gone to areas in which the problem is worst, rewarding failure with extra resources. As my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) rightly said, we now need a system that rewards success. Throughout the NHS, we will build systems to ensure that money flows through ward activity to ensure faster, better-quality care. The Bill will enable us to do that across the health and social services divide.
	I was a little disappointed by the suggestion that no one supported the Bill, and a bit surprised at the approach of the hon. Members for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) and for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor). The hon. Member for Westbury actually introduced a ten-minute Bill earlier this year which he said would facilitate a model based on the Swedish approach to delayed discharge, which he termed a Xhugely successful innovation". I do not know whether it is because he has ambitions that he has subsequently changed his mind, but it is very disappointing none the less.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) and for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) and the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) expressed concerns about responsibility in relation to delayed discharge. There are two elements to this question. First, I want to reassure hon. Members that the Bill states clearly, in clause 4(4)(b), that a charge would be due only if
	Xit has not been possible to discharge the patient because, and only because, the local authority has not made available for the patient a community care service which it decided under section 3(3)(b)"—
	that is the assessment—
	Xto make available for him".
	[Interruption.] For those hon. Members who clearly have not read the Bill, let me explain what that means. It means that if someone is a self-funder, or is waiting for an element of NHS care, and that is the reason for the discharge being delayed, the social services department will not be charged. That is fair and reasonable.
	The second element, however, is that several people—and, I am afraid, some local authorities—are trying to argue themselves out of responsibilities that rightly lie with social services departments, such as assessing needs and commissioning or providing adequate alternatives. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) rightly challenged the hon. Member for Woodspring on whether his argument is that local authorities should not meet their responsibilities. That is what it appeared to be. The Bill will not impose extra responsibilities on local government, but we expect local government to shoulder those responsibilities for vulnerable older people that it already has.
	Unlike the Conservatives, we have recognised our responsibility as a Government to fund the necessary developments. It has been claimed throughout the debate that there is not enough capacity in the care home sector for the Bill to work. There are clearly capacity issues in parts of the country, which is why our spending review made available resources for an increase in care home places. However, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the House on 14 November,
	Xwe will . . . have a problem if we think that the only way of caring for older people is placing them in . . . care homes."—[Official Report, 14 November 2002; Vol. 394, c. 178.]
	That is not how the majority of people want to be cared for. Most want to be able to return to their own homes, which is why we are providing the funding for local authorities to increase capacity across services for older people.
	Once again today, we heard calls for more money from Opposition Members, including the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, and the hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) and for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson), whose authorities received from the building care capacity grant £7.5 million, £3.2 million and £3.8 million respectively. Of course, they refused to vote for all that money when they were given the opportunity.
	The Bill will provide the incentive for local authorities to use that funding to produce a range of services—not only care home packages, but interim and intermediate care involving the provision outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate), such as step-down facilities, extra sheltered housing, home adaptation services and different home care packages. Only through the provision of such a range of services will older people get the choices they deserve in relation to the care that they receive.
	The important point is that there is a difference between how authorities, including those that face the same pressures, handle their responsibilities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North pointed out, using the approach that I have outlined, a difference is being made to the lives of people in Doncaster, North. For example, Croydon—part of the south-east that also faces pressures—has made a significant difference in respect of delayed discharges. The Bill will ensure that local authorities take responsibility, with the additional resources, for making the differences that will allow older people to get out of hospital when they need to.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) outlined the particular constraint around staff and occupational therapists in particular, so I am sure he is pleased that, under this Government, there has been a 36 per cent. increase in occupational therapists in training. He is right: part of the capacity constraint is to ensure that we have the work force in place.
	Several Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), concentrated on choice, among other things. Some have argued that the Bill will lead to patients having less choice regarding the services that they receive on discharge and that they will be pressured by local authorities to accept the first available placement. I believe that the opposite is true: the proposals will put the patient firmly at the centre of care and they should increase the choice available to older people. As we know from our experience with the building capacity grant, those councils that have achieved progress on delayed discharge have invested the money innovatively and in a range of services.
	The Bill will increase choice in other ways, such as that of staying at home rather than going into hospital in the first place. Preventing people from going into hospital when they could be better cared for with support in their own homes is a key way to reduce delays, and sensible councils will invest in services that enable older people to exercise that choice.
	Some Members raised the direction on choice, which exists to enable people to exercise choice when selecting a care home. The direction on choice does not mean that a patient has a right to occupy an acute bed indefinitely when others may be in much greater need. Even if someone is waiting for a place in the home of his or her choice to become available, that person should not be subjected to an inappropriate delay in an acute bed if he or she no longer requires acute hospital care, not least because that is not good for older people themselves. Councils need to invest in services such as step-down and interim care, or to provide intensive home care services so that patients can move to a more homely environment in the meantime.
	Some Members expressed concern about consent and advocacy. Let me reassure them that nothing in the Bill removes the current practice or law on consent and advocacy. Many areas have very good advocacy services, and are involved in discharge planning. There is no reason for that to change. In fact, the Government are ensuring that advocacy is available for patients throughout the health service.
	Concerns have also been expressed about care, but I think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State dealt with them. Several Members mentioned damage to partnership. Of course good working relationships exist in many areas, but partnership must be judged on the basis of what it produces. There must be more to the outcomes of partnership than simply a good set of minutes. If partnership is delivering, it will be the way in which to avoid reimbursement charges; but partnership depends on clarity about roles and responsibilities.
	Whatever the good intentions locally, the current system rewards buck-passing. An older person stuck in hospital is paid for by the hospital, even if that person is the responsibility of social services. We propose that the social services budget should pay for the older person's care when it becomes the responsibility of social services. Essentially, this will be a payment for looking after the patient.
	The Bill will clarify the roles and responsibilities of the various agencies. It will assist partnership. Most important, it will prevent older people from being caught in the middle of disputes.
	The Bill will ensure that the needs of the patient are put first, not the needs of the NHS or local government. Delayed discharges are bad for older people, worrying for their families and carers, frustrating for patients waiting for treatment and wasteful of taxpayers' money. Each older person trapped in hospital is an argument for change, and each is a demonstration that the current system is not working. As my right hon. Friend made clear, the mark of any civilised society is the way in which it treats its senior citizens. The mark of an effective health and social care system is that it ensures choice, access, independence and quality of care for our older people.
	The national service framework for older people is bringing health and social services together, and raising standards of care for older people. In July, my right hon. Friend announced a £1 billion package leading to faster assessment, more places in care homes and sheltered housing, more intermediate care services, and more support for older people wanting to live at home and their carers. Today we have responded to local government concerns about capacity by announcing that, in addition to the increases in social services funding, from next April we will transfer money from the NHS to enable social services departments to fulfil their responsibilities. This is a whole-system commitment to tackling delayed discharges.
	Not only has the extra funding been opposed by the Conservative party; today Conservative Members have also opposed the reforms to make it work. We know that the extra money we are providing for our health and social services brings with it a responsibility for us all—a responsibility to ensure that it makes a difference. The Bill ensures that services needed to promote independence will be provided free. It places new duties on the NHS to work with local authorities. It rewards social services departments that live up to their responsibilities. Most important, it puts the needs of vulnerable people, not organisations, at the centre of the system. I commend it to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	The House divided: Ayes 136, Noes 238.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 62 (Amendment on second or third Reading).
	The House divided: Ayes 237, Noes 135.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

COMMUNITY CARE (DELAYED DISCHARGES ETC.) BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 29 October 2002],
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
	Standing Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 12th December.
	3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on consideration are commenced.
	6. Sessional Order B (programming committees) made by the House on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Other proceedings
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
	The House divided: Ayes 228, Noes 119.

Question accordingly agreed to.

COMMUNITY CARE (DELAYED DISCHARGES ETC.) BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with Bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
	(a) any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State by virtue of the Act; and
	(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided by virtue of any other enactment.—[Charlotte Atkins].
	Question agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Housing Support Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2002, which was laid before this House on 15th November, be approved.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
	Question agreed to.

SCOTTISH GRAND COMMITTEE

Ordered,
	That—
	(1) the Scottish Grand Committee shall meet at Westminster on Tuesday 10th December at half-past Ten o'clock to consider a substantive Motion for the adjournment of the Committee; and
	(2) in respect of that sitting Standing Order No. 99 (Scottish Grand Committee (substantive motions for the adjournment)) shall have effect with the substitution in paragraph (2) (b) of the word 'five' for the word 'ten'.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

SECTION 5 OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (AMENDMENT) ACT 1993

Ordered,
	That, for the purposes of their approval under section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, the Government's assessment as set out in the Pre-Budget Report 2002 shall be treated as if it were an instrument subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 118 (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation).—[Charlotte Atkins.]

PETITIONS
	 — 
	Cliffe Airport

David Amess: I am honoured to present a petition signed by thousands of local residents who are horrified at the prospect of an airport at Cliffe which would operate on a 24-hour basis.
	The petition states:
	To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
	The Humble Petition of concerned residents of South East Essex and surrounding areas sheweth
	That the Government's proposed Cliffe Airport option appears, from the scant details so far revealed by the Government, to offer far more disadvantages than advantages to South East Essex; and that the Government has totally failed to consult fully the people of South East Essex on the question.
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House will urge the Government to rescind its Cliffe Airport option and undertake substantial, informed and open consultation in South East Essex.
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will every pray, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

New Midlands Airport

Andrew Robathan: This is the first petition that I have presented in my 10 years in the House. It is signed by 15,767 people in my constituency and elsewhere and reflects how distressed we are about the proposal to build an airport between Rugby and Coventry. It states:
	To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled
	The Humble Petition from the electors of Blaby, South Leicestershire and others of like disposition sheweth
	That the proposals for a new airport between Coventry and Rugby would involve the destruction of precious unspoilt countryside, rural environment and wildlife; that the airport would be built on the floodplain of the River Avon, thereby increasing the risk of flooding and would be contrary to planning advice contained in PPG25; that the costs of constructing such a new airport and associated infrastructure would be excessive; that such a large development on a greenfield site would be contrary to stated Government policy; that any such airport would be less conveniently situated for passengers than existing airports; that the construction and operation of such an airport would increase congestion on already congested motorways; that the noise and associated pollution would seriously discomfort local residents; and that the need for a new airport has not been convincingly demonstrated.
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House shall urge the Department for Transport to oppose any such proposals and to pursue instead the enlargement and improvement of existing airports.
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

Christchurch Road Post Office

Jane Griffiths: I am honoured to present a petition from people living in the community served by the Christchurch road post office in Reading. They are unhappy that it closed on the retirement of the previous postmistress and that the Post Office has not followed the process set out in its urban reinvention programme to review need in the area. The petition has been signed by almost 3,000 people on the initiative of Councillor Riaz Chaudhri.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to ensure that the Royal Mail work with local elected representatives, residents and shopkeepers on Christchurch Road to keep a post office open.
	And the Petitioners remain.
	To lie upon the Table.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING (SWINDON)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

Julia Drown: I welcome the opportunity to put Swindon's views on the review of local authority funding.
	My constituents have made it clear that they want and value improved local government and police services. A key part of that relies on new investment. My constituency has the worst-funded unitary education authority and my constituents have called for a fair funding system. We welcomed the review because we thought that we were bound to gain from it. Unfortunately, it has emerged that virtually every authority thought it would gain.
	Imagine, then, our disappointment when we found that although almost every other one of the 40 worst-funded education authorities with which we had campaigned looked to gain from at least some aspects of the new education formula, Swindon did not gain from any of the education options put forward. It is therefore no surprise that the review team and I have received a huge number of letters about the issue from teachers and parents in Swindon. Swindon has already received more education funding under this Labour Government—over £500 per pupil per year. However, teachers make it clear to me that extra funds are needed and would be well used to extend students' opportunities and to raise standards. Similarly, it is clear that we need more funds for social services.
	On all funding methods I urge the Government to give more details on how changes will take place. They have said that no authority will get less grant next year, but it is not clear whether that is in real or cash terms. The Government have also promised that, as the new system is implemented, no authority's schools will lose out, so schools simply need clarification about the period of implementation. However, for other services, and authorities overall, including police authorities, the position needs to be clarified.
	Given that the Government have allocated substantial resources to public services, they would give much reassurance to local authorities if they made it clear that, for police and local authorities, overall funding would be maintained in real terms for 2003–04, 2004–05 and as many more years as they felt able to make that promise. Authorities could at least plan on a level playing field, even if nominally they may lose out under the new formula. There should be no allowance for existing spending patterns, except as part of the process of implementing the new formulas. This is not a fair basis of funding. It is an allowance for existing spending and it will box in populations who have suffered under low-spending authorities and ensure that they remain in that position.
	I turn now to specific issues on particular services. Swindon has the third worst education standards in the south-west; Bristol has the poorest standards and receives the most funding, well above the south-west average, which is logical. Swindon receives £34 per pupil below the average. The lower standards are not because we have worse schools; they reflect deprivation that has not shown up in existing formulas or a lack of baseline funding to meet pupils' needs. I want the formula to be improved, not to take away from others but so that more future growth moneys support the lowest-funded authorities—where they are needed, as they are in Swindon.
	Giving extra funds for additional education needs is sensible. One of the questions under consideration is whether the working families tax credit should be included as a measure of deprivation, or whether only income support should be included. There is a powerful case for including the working families tax credit, or its equivalent in the new post-April system. Employment is rising, but in many constituencies that means that families are moving from no pay to low-paid work, and that does not change the education opportunities or attainment of those children overnight. If we want to ensure that the education challenges faced by families with no pay or in low-paid work, the way forward must be to take into account data on the working families tax credit as well as on income support.
	I would expect that to produce smoother changes in allocations, as the change in data for income support plus the working families tax credit is likely to be less dramatic than that for just income support. Smoother changes are a good policy goal. Whichever indicator of deprivation is chosen, the current threshold system fails the test of being easily understandable.
	In terms of deprivation, Swindon is about 110th in the 150 authorities, so we are about the 40th least deprived authority. The threshold in education tries to create what Swindon wants—a fair base level of funding for many authorities. Under option 2, the threshold was seen as high, with a baseline set at the bottom 50 authorities. However, it is not clear whether the additional funds for education needs are given to the bottom 50 authorities or levelled up to the 50th least deprived authority. If we assume the former, whereas under the current formula Swindon's existing needs are recognised, under the new formula they are ignored and taken to be just the baseline, so Swindon would lose £2 million compared with our current grant. That cannot be justified—Swindon's results do not justify reduction. We are currently in the bottom 40 authorities. The new formula is not levelling up, but is levelling down further, which does not make sense. The additional funds are concentrated on the 100 most deprived authorities, leaving few funds to distribute along the baseline.
	If Swindon is supposedly levelled up to get the resources of the 50th least deprived authority—a more deprived area—it is not right that that leaves Swindon with fewer resources than we have now. The threshold has to move up 105 authorities to be neutral for Swindon. Only then will a third of education authorities get extra help for special needs, and more resources will go into basic needs for all schools. That is difficult to justify—why does the extra support have to be concentrated on 50 authorities before the formula for Swindon is back where it started? Swindon is among the most poorly funded authorities, so it does not have a high basic level of funding. That alone shows how hard it is to follow the formula and suggests the need for a rethink.
	Option 5 proposed by the F40 group is widely supported. Of the 55,000 responses to the consultation on the review, 53,000 were made as a result of the F40 group's campaign. That represents a magnificent response from parents and staff who are keen to see a higher base level of funding. I hope that the Government in turn can respond positively and adopt an option along the lines of the F40's proposal, which builds up a higher base cost for all schools.
	Additional costs are inevitable in areas of high employment and housing shortages such as Swindon and must be acknowledged if there is to be sufficient recruitment and retention of staff. Head teachers have made it clear that they face pressures not experienced by their colleagues in other parts of the country when recruiting staff. Only yesterday a head teacher in one of the most deprived areas in Swindon told me that she had advertised a key post but received only three applications. The only suitable applicant came from abroad—she recruited that person, but unfortunately they did not stay at the school. That is just a small sign of the pressure we are under, and shows that we need extra resources to deal with our serious recruitment and retention problems. If the Government want to achieve equal opportunities for all students, those extra costs must be reflected in a new formula.
	Most work on this problem is not in the review of education but in reviews of area cost adjustment. Members on both sides of the House have recognised that the existing system is unfair. Proposals in the review paper are a vast improvement on current arrangements. A change is much needed and can be justified by the detailed work in options 2 and 3. Option 2 suggests using the method recommended by the independent review of the additional costs allowance in 1996 and taking more detailed account of differences in the structure of labour markets in different authorities. Swindon is a good example, as our economy is widely recognised as being different from that of the wider economy in Wiltshire and the south-west. With the exception of London, it is hard to find a town or city with as many national and international headquarters, but the prosperity that that brings hides deprivation, which is hard to tackle in an area of high wage and housing costs. That should be picked up by the formula, as options 2 and 3 propose.
	The arguments for options 3 and 5 are appealing, as private sector wages reflect the market, whereas public sector wages are fixed. If an area has a lot of public sector workers, the inclusion of the public sector will dampen the effect of wages, yet the pressure to find staff may be even greater in those areas. That applies as much to education as to other services, particularly social services. Although education rightly receives much of the limelight in the discussion of local government funding, the funding of social services is equally important. Many authorities, including Swindon, spend well over current Government assessments of funding, which indicates their huge needs. Swindon certainly faces huge pressures in social services for children, the elderly and people with mental health problems, all of which are essential in any civilised society.
	I should like to get back to the days when a home help service was available. It did good preventive work, but we are a long way from having it. Again, I recognise that the Government have put more investment into social services, but there is still a long way to go. Whichever proposal is chosen, the population basis should be the resident elderly population, plus those in residential care who are supported by the authority but live outside it. It does not seem right to exclude people who cost the authority a great deal of money. It is right that they should be supported, and if they are the responsibility of the local authority, they should be recognised in the formula.
	On fire service funding, a radical approach is needed to remove the perverse incentive of the fire calls indicator, which has been discredited. We should be doing all we can to promote preventive work, and I am very proud of the work that Swindon and Wiltshire fire brigade does in that respect. That has often been at the forefront of preventive work across the country. The fourth option for the fire service gives an extra top-slice for fire safety education, and an extra sparsity top-slice, which is surely justified. That is the most attractive option if the Government genuinely want to prevent fires and deal with the difficult pension problem facing the service.
	The second option, which makes only minimal changes, does not deal adequately with those issues. As the consultation has proved to be complex and painful, it is unlikely that Ministers and MPs will take part in such discussions every year, so any changes made now should be significant and substantial.
	Many concerns have been raised in Wiltshire with regard to police funding, particularly the rural policing fund. I was delighted to hear the Home Secretary announce last week that the rural policing fund would be preserved outside the formula. That is making an important difference in Wiltshire already and we want to see it retained.
	Whereas education services funding looks to use working families tax credit and income support data, environmental services funding takes account of income support only. It would seem logical to use both sets of data across Government Departments. I know that the Government have responded by saying that many of these services are subsidised in the day, but I cannot think of many services in Swindon that are subsidised in the day. In the case of cultural services, the same issues of access and inclusiveness would apply to those on low pay as to those on no pay.
	On population growth, I urge the Government to recognise that Swindon has been growing rapidly and it is a huge frustration to my constituents that the infrastructure does not keep up with that expansion. Formulae must take account of that. Swindon may be in a unique position, as we have effectively been a new town without being defined as a new town. We have been the fastest-growing town and services have not caught up with the expansion of population. The borough council planned for that as much as possible but, because of rate capping and other problems, it was not able to do as much as necessary. Outside the funding formula, perhaps the Minister will consider allowing more of Swindon's uniform business rate to be returned to the town for a defined period so that we could catch up with the investment needed. With our Government-backed urban regeneration company and new regional development agency structures, this may be a key time to deliver on that.
	My constituents rely on local government services and appreciate the value of those services. They want the Government to adopt a new, fairer formula for funding local government services to reflect the differing needs and costs of services in different areas. I have highlighted some of the issues that the new formula should address. I emphasise three points: first, a review of the area cost adjustment is crucial to reflect the pressures that high-cost areas such as Swindon experience; secondly, the need for a higher basic funding level for education authorities; and thirdly, the need for major additional investment in social services.

Christopher Leslie: I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on securing this debate. There is much competition between many hon. Members throughout the House for a debate on this issue. It is the mark of a dedicated and conscious Member of Parliament to argue in such detail about technical and funding matters that obviously affect all our constituents so significantly.
	My hon. Friend has given me a very long list of issues to cover, so I shall press on and try my best to address some of them. Hon. Members will be aware that the Leader of the House confirmed earlier today that the announcements on these matters will have been made by this time next week, so we do not have long to wait. In the meantime, however, I can certainly reassure her that the points that she has been making have, along with all other responses, been taken into account in making the final decisions. This debate also follows the announcement made earlier this week about setting up a voluntary arrangement with Swindon borough council following a request from the authority for help in improving public services, which are facing difficulties in the area.
	My hon. Friend is especially concerned about funding for schools. She registered her support for the proposals made by the F40 group. I assure her that I am well aware of the strength of feeling not only in Swindon, but elsewhere in the country, which the group has made plain. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards has been able to meet a delegation of representatives. I know that there was a helpful exchange of views.
	On the options in the education formula, it is worth reiterating that the considerable increases in funding for education that the spending review has provided over the next three years mean that we have been able to give the commitment that no authority's schools will lose out in real terms in moving to the new formula. We want a fairer, clearer system that is justified by the educational needs of children and based on the most up-to-date evidence of relative cost and need. Any formula will need an element for deprivation, known as additional educational needs, and an enhancement for areas where schools need to pay more to recruit and retain staff.
	The F40 group has proposed a change to the formula, suggesting that money be taken out of the factor specified in the formula for deprivation and put into the basic allowance per pupil. That would have an impact on authorities with high levels of deprivation. In working out a new funding system, we need to consider how changes will affect all authorities, not only those in the F40 group. However, I can assure my hon. Friend that we have been considering all the responses very carefully, including those from the F40 authorities.
	My hon. Friend mentioned some specific points that I shall try to address. In respect of how the education formula will treat issues relating to deprivation, the indicator that we choose is clearly very important. I appreciate that Swindon has some disadvantaged areas with residents in low-paid work. Among the proposals for the new funding formula are two options in which the main indicator for deprivation—the number of children of parents on income support—is supplemented by the number of children of parents in receipt of the working families tax credit. That option picks up children whose parents are in low-paid work and aims to reflect a wider definition of poverty. As I said, we will see the outcome very shortly.
	On the complex question that my hon. Friend asked about the threshold for additional educational needs and how it works, the consultation options all use thresholds for assessing top-ups. For example, the threshold of 30 LEAs would give all authorities funding as if 13 per cent. of their pupils were deprived. If 15 per cent. of an authority's pupils are deprived, it would receive additional funding for the 2 per cent. of pupils above the threshold, but if that authority has a level of less than 13 per cent., it would receive funding as if it had a 13 per cent. level.
	I appreciate my hon. Friend's concerns about the level of the threshold and how it might affect Swindon. Although the threshold is relatively easy to convey in a general sense, I can sympathise with her about the difficulty in assessing how the different threshold levels will affect individual authorities. In making decisions, we are considering the pros and cons of high and low-level thresholds for additional educational needs.
	Let me deal with the way in which the current system reflects the extra costs through area cost adjustment. It takes account of the extra costs of recruiting and retaining staff in some areas, especially London and the south-east. The options in the consultation paper are based on evidence that suggests that authorities with significant deprivation and additional staff costs need to spend more to achieve the same results for their children. I accept that there is scope for judgment about the evidence, but the four options reflect that.
	To make a wider point about the area cost adjustment, I note that my hon. Friend supports options ACA2 and ACA3, and that on balance she prefers options that are based only on wages in the private sector. Although we understand the rationale for using only private sector wages, there are arguments against doing that, notably the reality of lower wage flexibility in the public sector. We must weigh up those issues carefully.
	My hon. Friend seeks assurance on several other formula issues. She mentioned the elderly personal social services formulae. There are two main choices. One option is to use the total resident population, which includes those in households and residential care. The alternative is to use the population in households plus the number of people in residential care that the authority supports. My hon. Friend was clear that she supports the latter. Both options include people in residential care, but the second approach recognises that authorities place people in care in other authorities. However, the matter is more complicated and it is difficult to go into great detail. We have been carefully considering the balance as we finalise decisions.
	My hon. Friend also questioned the reason for including deprivation in police option 5. It has a separate deprivation factor, which was included in the consultation document to seek views on whether that would be an acceptable method of helping to implement the Government's agenda to help people out of deprivation.
	My hon. Friend also asked whether the £30 million rural policing fund would continue next year. I appreciate that she spotted that the national policing plan, which the Home Secretary launched, will continue in its current form outside the funding formula.
	My hon. Friend believes that working families tax credit data should be used in the block of services that is catchily entitled EPCS, or environmental, protective and cultural services, in addition to assessing deprivation based on benefits data.
	Low wages are clearly an aspect of deprivation that is not well covered by benefits data, but is that the right indicator for EPCS? Is that set of services in as much need of deprivation weighting as, for example, education or social services? Decisions will be made, announced and explained next week, but we are all grappling with those questions.
	Let us consider fixed costs for authorities. All authorities, whatever their size, must have specific functions, for example, a chief executive, a director of finance and so on. Those basics constitute bigger issues for small authorities. However, it is debatable whether much can be achieved through a fixed-cost element for larger authorities such as police authorities or fire authorities. Nevertheless, we are carefully considering all the arguments.
	My hon. Friend mentioned population growth and the extent to which the formula should recognise it. We have received many comments on that. We understand the anxieties of rapid growth areas about their increasing population. The consultation paper contains an option of making a targeted grant that is top-sliced off the total formula grant to avoid the complexity of including it in the formula. The results of the 2001 census highlight some of the difficulties of simply projecting forward past population trends.
	My hon. Friend proposed a more radical approach for the fire service formula to get rid of the perverse incentive of the fire calls indicator. I assure her that we have looked closely at all the formulae to ensure that they no longer include the perverse incentives and inadequate indicators that many of them contained.
	On non-domestic rates, the Government have said in the pre-Budget report that we will explore how some of the increased business rate revenue derived from growth and regeneration might be retained by councils. We will be consulting on any proposals next year.
	The formula grant review is, of course, about the distribution between authorities of a fixed pot of money. However, it is worth reminding the House that we have significantly increased the funding for local authorities overall since we took office, with Government grant increasing by 20 per cent. in real terms, compared with the 7 per cent. cut in real terms over the last four years of the previous Conservative Administration. The spending review ensures that councils will continue to see increased funding. I have repeated the good increases in grant for local authorities generally in previous Adjournment debates that have taken place recently in the House, and I do not wish to take up too much time in this debate repeating all the good news for local authorities.
	My hon. Friend has called for even bigger increases in funding over the next three years, in particular for social services. We looked carefully at all the pressures facing local authorities, at the improvements in service we want to see made, at the room for greater efficiencies and at what the country can afford when setting the spending plans for the next three years—plans which provide now for a real-terms growth in funding for personal social services of 6 per cent. a year. We believe that we have been able to ensure that the people will be able to see real improvements over the next few years in the priority areas such as personal social services.
	My hon. Friend has also asked for clarification on the Government's commitments on the level of grant increase next year. We have said that we will ensure that no local authority receives less grant than it did last year on a like-for-like basis—that is, if the composition, nature and functions of the local authority do not change significantly. This is a cash grant increase pledge—not in real terms—but we hope to do much better than this in the announcements that we make this time next week.
	My hon. Friend has also asked for floors to be set for all three years of the spending review. We want to ensure that local authorities have greater certainty about future funding. We have said that we intend to keep floors and ceilings as part of the new system, and they will therefore feature in the local government finance settlement for at least the next two years. However, we cannot provide information on the levels of floors and ceilings for future years, as there are too many variable factors which can affect decisions on the floor. Given that, we are unable to provide this information much in advance of the provisional settlement for each year.
	It is worth looking at how Swindon has benefited since we took office. It has received an annual average increase in standard spending assessments of 5.2 per cent., compared with an increase of 1.5 per cent. in the last four years of the previous Conservative Administration. Swindon's education SSA has increased by nearly £21 million—more than 37 per cent.—over five years. Its standards fund allocation has increased significantly, and it has received more money for capital, including the £58 million private finance initiative scheme. In social services, Swindon's children's grant has increased by 18 per cent. and its carers' grant by 21 per cent.
	A wide-ranging review is under way. There is, of course, a difficult balance to be struck, but we are considering carefully all the points that have been made, particularly by hon. Members who have spoken and written in during the consultation period. The Government have a good track record of providing major new funds for councils, and I hope that, in the decisions that are announced next week, many hon. Members will see the commitments that we have been able to maintain.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes past Eight o'clock.